Ridgeline subscribers —

For the last ten days I’ve been walking around London. Mostly in a little corner of it in the northeast part of the city. But can you even call a part a “corner” when the city extends in every direction without stopping? Whatever you call it, I’ve been in my little northeast section (if not corner) spending mornings reading and writing until I’m cross-eyed and then afternoons walking the streets over and over again.

I’ve been impressed by the general delightful weirdness of everyone, the extreme Britishness of all the Brits, the small flourishes in fashion or hair that scream to these American-in-Tokyo eyeballs: London! A bit of Bed-Stuy through the looking glass and all that.

Everyone is moving — there is a lot of movement (as you’d expect, this is a city). I walk and feel the chaos of all the movement — the walkers, bikers, joggers, the delivery people, the parents with strollers, the giant buses that quite frankly scare the hell out of me (especially the electric ones; like having a whale suddenly appear three feet from your shoulder). Leashes don’t exist; dogs sniff left and right and left and right. Walks through Abney Park Cemetery. Leashless dogs galore. Dogs run wild amid the collapsed tombstones and old bones. Woe be, though, to the dog-fearful out and about.

I made it into so-called ’town’ a few times. More movement, extreme chaos. The walk signals that change only for half the street at a time. The crush of tourist crowds as soon as you emerge from Covent Garden. (And those mandatory elevators in a subway station? Oof.)

But truly: I barely know up from down in London. Which only enhances the surreal pleasure of it all. The neighborhoods melt together. The socioeconomic stratifications are lost on me. It feels like it takes at least forty-five minutes to get anywhere in town. It is immense, this city, sprawling seemingly forever. It reminds me of Tokyo in this way, but more squat. London is freakishly “low” — that is, it seems to be missing a layer of tallness you’d typically expect (or at least, I find myself expecting).

I walked from unknown place to unknown place. I saw a comedy show at the Bill Murray in Angel and took the New River Path for an hour to get there, snaking past electric green algae and sudden rock gardens. A grown man in shorts sat down next to me and his pasty legs were paler than my stomach; I had found my people. I walked from some random point in town for an hour to the Barbican — a friend recently moved into their mid-century apartments. The environs felt like being on the set of Brazil; suddenly the aesthetic of the movie made sense. Underground and above-ground layers merged. Was I in a parking garage or a sculpture garden? Little glass buttons on is-this-or-isn’t-this intercoms were used to buzz a body up (but silently; was the buzzing happening?!). The elevator spat you out into a Backrooms-style corridor with heavy blue doors. Which way? You felt certain to noclip in either direction. When you finally found the apartment itself: wow. Three floors pivoting around a hardwood staircase with bent tubular steel handrails, huge wood-framed square windows (inset further with metal frames) that slid on metal rails opening to three balconies, a top floor bedroom with twelve-foot ceilings and curved skylights. Crack all the windows and you got astounding airflow throughout. A tunnel of windy delight. It was standing on one of these balconies where I noticed The Shard — a single specimen of ridiculousness on the horizon, south of the river. Ninety-five horrible floors. It made me think about that overall “shortness” of the city. I was embarrassed for The Shard in the way I’m embarrassed for the billionaire apartments on the south edge of Central Park (and embarrassed for us for having made it).

I didn’t walk home from the Barbican, though. My friend had a puck of Zyn on his table. Oh, I’ll try that, I thought, in a moment of teenage whimsy. Zyns were Swedish, you could buy them anywhere, what a funny little product. Nothing evil ever came from Sweden, I thought. They looked like pillows for doll babies. Between my upper lip and gums I shoved the little doll pillow of nicotine. Fifteen minutes later I was puking. What hell hath devised such a thing? And people suck on these daily? Willingly? Over and over? I am the first American in London to have a “whitey” (somehow the most British of British words; singularly embodying the UK’s pervasive, casual drug-curiosity) from a Zyn. I was shook. My body in the thrall of a nicotine bomb’s inverted hysteresis. A cold sweat soaked my clothes. I curled up in a stupid little ball on the floor felled by the stupid little doll pillow. In the distance, through one of those gorgeous mid-century windows, I could see The Shard. It mocked me. It pulsed like the Eye of Sauron in its extreme out-of-placeness, and it felt like I had been smitten by it, by way of Sweden, for judging it from a balcony in a flat in the Barbican. ABBA played faintly. I dreamt of getting off the floor one day but that day felt far off. The friends around me spoke passionately about rolling up their socks. Soon, I’d be walking again. Eventually, I called a car.

I thought I was done with London for a bit, but Heathrow (and hackers?) thought otherwise. I was supposed to be in Norway tonight. Fingers crossed tomorrow’s flight takes off (and lands). So: I’ll be walking more of London tomorrow, leaning into this extra day of London time via the fickle gods of aviation.

Goodnight,
C