Feminist Ryan Gosling is too Freaking Awesome.

Really.  You just have to see it!

How to Review Blog

I must admit I wonder how to craft a bloggy review.  Scholarly, creative, poetic, how much to edit, plan, research the thing?  At the moment I'm going with just the brainstormy generative type writing with little or no editing.  And as a somewhat scholarly person maybe that's okay because blogs are part of the musing-reflecting-digesting part of the thinking, which is what scholarship mostly is.  I'll go with that.

Thinking about 'So'

Thinking about 'so'.  About how I was kinda enjoying how I use the casual 'so'to begin a sentence, talkative-like; an interrupted beginning to a thought.  But!  It's the blogging cliche, I'm hearing it everywhere, Bridget Jones and all the bad writers the girl blog movies are about (even if I like the stories and the movies are good, the writing's pretty bad!)  So.  No to so.

First Reflection

So far, I am particularly noticing that London feels cute.  Something about the compact dimensions and rounded corners of the cabs, buses, the older, more-planned-than-Sydney structures.  I was expecting it to be harsher, scary.  But I am feeling in me the toughness of Australia, the harsh white light, harsh impact of culture, harsh attitudes of, say, Sydney.  Even the multicultural moments in London feel more woven into the days. Just a first-travel-day's reflections that are a gloss needle threaded across the top of an ocean of complexity, but, still.

The European wind on the cheeks in the eyes makes instant sense of the speedy junglish music in hot basements, huddling in pubs, and the weather-appropriate London style.  I know I know and many know this: it's just that profound and middling knowing achieved by being here with feet on cobbly, cute-narrow footpaths that does it.

The Tate Modern had the usual gallery effect of stimulating overwhelm, inspired and hard on the feet.  I spotted a couple of hidden gems within the Poetry and Dream exhibition covering futurists, Dadaists, surrealists.  It is great and strangely ordinary, full of disbelief to stand in front of an image looked at in books and internet from afar and see it as a painting breathing the same air as me, but also limited in the confines of a frame and the history and machinery of Art Industry.  Say a Max Ernst.  

Many snippets ring.  The sandwich and coffee man empathising with his Pakistani regulars: "that's true, Baba". The serious stylish angles rocked in a configuration of afro and capped beanies. The grey light with receeding orange slices of sun on roof contrasting with my lived knowledge of Australia's nothing-spared-knives of solar blast.  Kids camera-wrangling and loving at Globe Theatre gates where each wrought iron animal is in a Shakespeare play. And -

Heathrow Express

We are on the express train after travelling for over a day. I am feeling that surreal steaminess of sleep deprivation but could also just keep going now. Everything has been smooth so far, even though I was sick. I have just loved watching all of the different Emirates people, glimpses of Londoners so far. So, we've arrived!