Haikus: Epiphany

I know this summer I haven't posted as much as usual.  Due to my job and thesis research, I didn't have as much time for personal writing as I wanted to.  I did find myself jotting down phrases on the go and eventually got the idea to work on a collection of haikus.  I had a lot of fun with this project and it was really fascinating how once I embraced the form, it seems like I started thinking 5-7-5.  I'm not sure if this project is over, but it's time I share these snippets from the past few months.

So, without further adieu, summer 2015 according to Haikus: Epiphany.

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Cascadia:

Disillusioned ones

walk on. But the face of God

is a mountainside. 

Staying up the hours the carpool lane is open:

Embrace the night owl 

living within yourself and 

stop harboring guilt.

Post Alley:

I don't remember

the song playing, but I now 

have my alibi 

Flat Rate Boxes:

Can't account for the 

words, tears, everything, but...

"You want your stuff back?" 

Park West:

See the pale half-moon, 

fire-red sun share the sky

and feel my pulse calm. 

Breakfast conversations:

"Girls go to work, too?"

As mothers and execs, but

yes, darling girl, yes.

12805:
Strangers footprints mark
once most-familiar floors,
when home is not home.

Soho, 1.30am:

"What the hell is that?"

Your wedding ring... Brokenness 

I can't help you bear. 

Anticipation:

Oxford isn't a place, 

but an ancient creature made

of heart-beating stones. 

Original Starbucks:

Spain. England. Belgium. 

"No, that wasn't the last one." 

Stroking away fears...

Welcome:

Fresh-faced pixies, once

I was like you, before I 

felt always behind. 

Cœur de la vallée:

Wood smoke.  Unbroke.  Our

star-gazing conversations

ease anxiety. 

Highway 101:

Ever think about

Seattle and recall that

corridor we shared? 

An Erasure from Compline, Book of Common Prayer:

Glory to Father, Son 

Holy Spirit, as it was, 

is, will be. Amen.

Westview:

That moment when they

cry, "I can't believe..." and it's

like vindication. 

Happy Birthday, Benedict!

It has been an amazing year to be a fan of Benedict Cumberbatch (see Oscar Nomination), but for me this year has been especially amazing because my Birthday Wishes for him from the last several years have come true.  Benedict's 38th has all been about:

And then his biggest wish came true:

"Benedict Cumberbatch and Sophie Hunter are delighted to announce the arrival of their beautiful son."

Congrats to Benedict, Sophie, and Baby Batch :) on a banner year!

Cheers to 39!

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Annnd this year, a wish of mine is actually coming true.

Recently, one of my closest friends won a pair of tickets to see Lyndsey Turner's Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch!!!

She graciously invited me to come with her, I couldn't say no, we've booked a flat near Hampstead Heath for 4 nights, and, as of yesterday, I have a ticket to London.

Sooo... in just about 6 weeks, I'll be at the Barbican seeing him perform live. 

And I can. not. freaking. believe. it!

Can you say "trip of a lifetime"?

More anticipation and news forthcoming, but for today:

Happy Birthday, Benedict! And see you later :) 

31 Days of Books: Tale of Two Cities

Title:  Tale of Two Cities

Author:  Charles Dickens

Published:  1854

Year I read it:  2004, 2006

One sentence summary:  The classic novel of the French Revolution; of doppelgangers; of family devotion, betrayal, and shame; and of the relation of two cities: London and Paris.

Interesting fact:  Dickens's only historical fiction novel. 

Three reasons to read it:

• If you, like me, think Dickens is a bit heavy-handed in his symbolism and caricatures and length, etc... Let me assure you, this book is better than most.  [It's like Spielberg's Lincoln - he seems to have stepped back enough to let the characters breathe and fill the space he's created.]
• Sydney Carton.  No, I'm not just fangirling.  I may have a thing for complex, quasi-scoundrelly protagonists.  But it's not just that.  Sydney is genuinely amazing.  He's brilliant creation and he makes the rest of this story work.
• This is one of those books that you have to trust that the author is weaving a web of plots and that they will somehow connect in the end.  Dickens does a fabulous job of bringing all his threads together for a spectacular climax - no loose ends, no characters wasted. 

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• Being that it's Dickens, there are still (in my opinion) the issue of the weak-or-evil-female conundrum. 

Great quotes:

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” 

“I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.” 

"Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?""Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.”

Wednesday Creatives: The London Stage comes to Seattle

I need live theatre.  Not just want... I need it.  If I go too long without it I get twitchy!

And I'm not too much of a snob about it; a $5 UW Undergrad production of Macbeth satisfied me just as much as some ventures to 5th Ave.  But, like with Peter and Alice (which I wrote about here & here),  there are times when a production sounds SO good that the quality matters.  That's when I'm so very grateful for the digital age! 

Two sources in particular are doing great things to bring London's Stage closer to home:  Digital Theatre and National Theatre Live.


Digital Theatre works with several great theatres - including the RSC, Royal Court, Shakespeare's Globe, and an array of West End productions.  Their site allows you to rent or buy digital copies of these productions.  They have a strong Shakespeare collection, but also several award-winning, contemporary options.   My personal favorite is their modernized Much Ado About Nothing starring David Tennant & Catherine Tate


[This was actually playing when I was in London, but, alas, was sold out]



[Yes - Doctor Who S3 becomes Shakespeare!]

The other, is National Theatre Live.  Beginning with the National Theatre of Great Britain 5 years ago, now extended to several other theatres, NT Live's purpose is to broadcast productions to cinemas around the world - making theatre accessible, while maintaining the collective viewing experience singular to the theatre.  When possible, they broadcast the plays live.  That means going to see a play in Seattle at noon while it is concurrently taking place at an 8 pm showing in London.  100% live.  They do encores as well, where they have recorded productions.

Through NT Live I've seen Danny Boyle's Frankenstein (starring the Olivier Award-Winning pair, Jonny Lee Miller & Benedict Cumberbatch) a few times - and it's returning this Fall!! - as well as Alan Bennett's play People.  They've both been fabulous quality!

Through SIFF, you can catch most NT Live productions.  Some upcoming hilights:  Helen Mirren in The Audience,  Rory Kinnear & Adrian Lester in Othello, and, coming next January, Tom Hiddleston is Coriolanus (!!)

All that to say - London can sometimes feel closer than it actually is.  And there are some surprisingly affordable ways to catch a viewing of some of the greatest actors reciting the greatest lines. 

If any of the NT Live showings strike your fancy, leave a comment - maybe we can go together!

D-Day - London War Notes

As many of you know, I recently finished Mollie Panter-Downes' London War Notes.  I was deeply impressed by the account of day to day life in London.  In honor of today's anniversary of D-Day, I wanted to share the post she wrote that week about how England responded.  Here it is, thanks especially to my friend Simon, who shared this a few months back, inspiring me to seek out the book for myself.  So worth the read.

* * * * * * * * * *

For the English, D Day might well have stood for Dunkirk Day. The tremendous news that British soldiers were back on French soil seemed suddenly to reveal exactly how much it had rankled when they were beaten off it four years ago. As the great fleets of planes roared toward the coast all day long, people glancing up at them said, "Now they'll know how our boys felt on the beaches of Dunkirk." And as the people went soberly back to their jobs, they had a satisfied look, as though this return trip to France had in itself been worth waiting four impatient, interminable years for. There was also a slightly bemused expression on most D Day faces, because the event wasn't working out quite the way anybody had expected. Londoners seemed to imagine that there would be some immediate, miraculous change, that the heavens would open, that something like the last trumpet would sound. What they definitely hadn't expected was that the greatest day of our times would be just the same old London day, with men and women going to the office, queuing up for fish, getting haircuts, and scrambling for lunch.



D Day sneaked up on people so quietly that half the crowds flocking to business on Tuesday morning didn't know it was anything but Tuesday, and then it fooled them by going right on being Tuesday. The principal impression one got on the streets was that nobody was smiling. The un-English urge to talk to strangers which came over Londoners during the blitzes, and in other recent times of crisis, was noticeably absent. Everybody seemed to b existing wholly in a preoccupied silence of his own, a silence which had something almost frantic about it, as if the effort of punching bus tickets, or shopping for kitchen pans, or whatever the day's chore might be, was, in its quiet way, harder to bear than a bombardment. Later in the day, the people who patiently waited in the queues at each newsstand for the vans to turn up with the latest editions were still enclosed in their individual silences. In the queer hush, one could sense the strain of a city trying to project itself across the intervening English orchards and cornfields, across the strip of water, to the men already beginning to die in the French orchards and cornfields which once more had become "over there." Flag sellers for a Red Cross drive were on the streets, and many people looked thoughtfully at the little red paper symbol before pinning it to their lapels, for it was yet another reminder of the personal loss which D Day was bringing closer for thousands of them.


In Westminster Abbey, typists in summer dresses and the usual elderly visitors in country-looking clothes came in to pray beside the tomb of the last war's Unknown Soldier, or to gaze rather vacantly at the tattered colours and the marble heroes of battles which no longer seemed remote. The top-hatted old warrior who is gatekeeper at Marlborough House, where King George V was born, pinned on all his medals in honour of the day, and hawkers selling cornflowers and red and white peonies had hastily concocted little patriotic floral arrangements, but there was no rush to put out flags, no cheers, no outward emotion. In the shops, since people aren't specially interested in spending money when they are anxious, business was extremely bad. Streets which normally are crowded had the deserted look of a small provincial town on a wet Sunday afternoon. Taxi drivers, incredulously cruising about for customers, said it was their worst day in months. Even after the King's broadcast was over, Londoners stayed home. Everybody seemed to feel tat this was one night you wanted your own thoughts in your own chair. Theatre and cinema receipts slumped, despite the movie houses' attempt to attract audiences by broadcasting the King's speech and the invasion bulletins. Even the pubs didn't draw the usual cronies. At midnight, London was utterly quiet, the Civil Defence people were standing by for a half-expected alert which didn't come, and D Day has passed into history.


It is in the country distracts just back of the sealed south coast that one gets a real and urgent sense of what is happening only a few minutes' flying time away. Pheasants whirr their alarm at the distant rumble of guns, just as they did when Dunkirk's guns were booming. On Tuesday evening, villagers hoeing weeds in the wheat fields watched the gliders passing in an almost unending string toward Normandy. And always there are the planes. When the big American bombers sail overhead, moving with a sinister drowsiness in their perfect formations, people who have not bothered to glance up at the familiar drone for months rush out of their houses to stare. Everything is different, now that the second front has opened, and every truck on the road, every piece of gear on the railways, every jeep and half-track which is heading toward the front has become a thing of passionate concern. The dry weather, which country folk a week ago were hoping would end, has now become a matter for worry the other way round. Farmers who wanted grey skies for their hay's sake now want blue ones for the sake of their sons, fighting in the skies and on the earth across the Channel. Finally, there are the trainloads of wounded, which are already beginning to pass through summer England, festooned with its dog roses and honeysuckle. The red symbol which Londoners were pinning to their lapels on Tuesday now shines on the side of trains going past crossings where the waiting women, shopping baskets on their arms, don't know whether to wave or cheer or cry. Sometimes they do all three.

Wednesday Creatives: Neverland, Wonderland, and the British Stage

There are some plays I hear about that make me want to hop on the next plane to London.

Today I found out about one of those:

Peter and Alice

As you might be able to surmise,  the play is about the two individuals who inspired the most iconic British children's stories: Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.  It is a fictional account of what might have transpired at the true-life 1932 meeting between an 80 year old Alice Liddell Hargreaves and a 35 Peter Llewellyn Davies.

Intrigued yet? Well I haven't told you the best part!

The best part?

Peter = Ben Wishaw

Alice = Judi Dench

"Get outta town?" - I know, I want to!

Yes, not exactly Q and M, but reunited just the same.

These are two of my favorite British Thespians!

Logan's play explores the loss of innocence and darker outcomes of sharing a name and identity with a fictional character.  We know from the actual lives of Peter and Alice that while the latter proudly basked in being the inspiration of beloved Alice, the former disdained it, often feeling haunted by the invisible presence of his eponymous character until he committed suicide.

The production physically reproduces the characters - as well as creators Carroll and Barrie - to create imagined conversations and confrontations.

Overall, I think this would be a fascinating look at literature, inspiration, innocence, facade, and identity.

A friend of mine from Oxford is going to see it this weekend (I'll share his review), and I'm trying to practice the 10th commandment, subpoint 3.35, which clearly states, "Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's proximity or accessibility to the West End."

Help me, Lord.

**Update: his review!**

In the meantime, I'll just be scouting out Digital Theatre, etc. searching for any chance to see it for myself :)

Thought this was cute! #disneylove

Been on my heart and mind lately... perhaps I'm drawn back to a year ago this weekend, when I got to visit the house in Hampstead where he penned this poem. Perhaps I just love it. 

Listen and enjoy:

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains  
  My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,  
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains  
  One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:  
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,         5
  But being too happy in thine happiness,  
    That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,  
          In some melodious plot  
  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,  
    Singest of summer in full-throated ease.  10

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been  
  Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,  
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,  
  Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!  
O for a beaker full of the warm South!  15
  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,  
    With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,  
          And purple-stainèd mouth;  
  That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,  
    And with thee fade away into the forest dim:  20

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget  
  What thou among the leaves hast never known,  
The weariness, the fever, and the fret  
  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;  
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,  25
  Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;  
    Where but to think is to be full of sorrow  
          And leaden-eyed despairs;  
  Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,  
    Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.  30

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,  
  Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,  
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,  
  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:  
Already with thee! tender is the night,  35
  And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,  
    Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays  
          But here there is no light,  
  Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown  
    Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.  40

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,  
  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,  
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet  
  Wherewith the seasonable month endows  
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;  45
  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;  
    Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;  
          And mid-May's eldest child,  
  The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,  
    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.  50

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time  
  I have been half in love with easeful Death,  
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,  
  To take into the air my quiet breath;  
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,  55
  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,  
    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad  
          In such an ecstasy!  
  Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—  
    To thy high requiem become a sod.  60

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!  
  No hungry generations tread thee down;  
The voice I hear this passing night was heard  
  In ancient days by emperor and clown:  
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path  65
  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,  
    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;  
          The same that ofttimes hath  
  Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam  
    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.  70

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell  
  To toll me back from thee to my sole self!  
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well  
  As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.  
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades  75
  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,  
    Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep  
          In the next valley-glades:  
  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?  
    Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?  80

[Keat's house in Hampstead Heath]

One year ago today...

...I landed in London.








[p.s. - beginning of a new series celebrating 1 year since my grand adventures in England. It won't be every day, but I have to celebrate a few highlights.]

A friend snapped this yesterday... ah, I miss you, London, but I'm coming back!!

[pc: Jessica]

[London at sunset, July 7, 2011]



I miss it.

But I feel slightly closer to England this week because I have a handful of friends going!

Today my dear friend Lois will be landing to start her quarter long study porgram in London. I'm so excited for her! She's going to get to see great theatre performances, amazing literary and historical sites, and a few of the filming locations for our favorite British TV Shows

[Remember Lois -
Speedy's: 187 North Gower Street

Bart's: West Smithfield =]

I'm not sure if I'm more jealous that Lois gets to be in London or that London gets Lois. I'm going to miss her a lot. But I'm grateful we've made the most out of our time together--from giggling in Shakespeare class, sharing Sherlock videos, going to see Macbeth, and our fabulous British period-drama double-header, I have become so grateful for my anglophile, lit-nerd friend!

If you are interested, you can follow her adventures here: Lois in London.

I'm also excited for friends Kim and Andrew White to return to their native England on a way to a missions trip. On their way home, they also have a little getaway with Andrew's parents and four brothers. So happy for them!

Best wishes to all who are travelling to the beautiful land of Albion this week!!!

source

weekend adventures

Well, I hope you have all had an exciting weekend--I definitely have =)

My adventure-packed weekend started on thursday when our whole group went on an excursion, which included a trip to Broughton Castle (filming location for Shakespeare in Love among other movies).

The gardens were absolutely gorgeous!

entrance to the secret garden...

surrounded by beauty: the gardens and Kristina =)

Picnic in the sun across the moat from a flock of sheep.

Kristina and I listened to Pride and Prejudice on my ipod while reading our Jane Austen homework... quite a sublime moment.

This tree reminds me of Jane Eyre

Friday afternoon, I settled in the sunny quad at Magdalen for a bit of afternoon study.

That night, I attended an absolutely marvelous production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by the Oxford Shakespeare Guild. There interpretation was as hilarious as it was creative. An absolutely wonderful night with friends.

Saturday, my friend, Elizabeth, and I did a day trip to London. We took a literature inspired approach to the day and had a marvelous time.

Here is part of Kensington Gardens, the park from which J. M. Barrie got his original inspiration for Peter Pan.

These are two of the "Italian Fountains":

221 B Baker Street

happy girl =)

Probably my favorite literary stop of the day, this is John Keats house in Hampstead. This is the house he shared with Fanny Brawne and it is also where he composed many of his poems including a personal favorite, Ode to a Nightingale.

Today I went to church at OCC and then went out with some new friends from there. They are all so fun to be around.

How was your weekend?

Also, do you know of anything else in London that I should really try to see before I leave? I'd love to hear your ideas!

London at night: Big Ben, the Eye, and the River Thames

I was hoping to do a bit of fashion blogging while over in England. This is my first attempt (and it was, in fact, done stalker style).

I love the details: the airy scarf, the navy blue handbag, and the way she carries herself.