Britain's Grand Cabinet of Curiosities

14 September 2008

Before I headed for the United Kingdom this summer, I always knew that I have my quieter days and my exuberant days, but it's another thing to live through one. Today, the agenda has consisted of showering, eating, completing my written evaluation for yesterday's tour on political theatre, and a visit to the British Museum. Nothing too overwhelming. Just a still and rather lethargic day in London. I have conflicted feelings about it, but before I delve into the day's events anymore deeply, I suppose I owe you all a brief account of last night.

Yesterday, I reported that after dinner, I was going to spend my evening working on my journal; that didn't happen. I went with Zack, Meghan, and Emma to "The Fitzrovia" for dinner. I had the roasted chicken dinner and a pint of Bombardier, which put me roughly five pounds over budget but was a delight to the tastebuds. Afterwards, I ran into Shannyn who was going with a troop of people to the Mayor's Thames Festival on the South Bank. I decided to tag along. I changed into something a little more practical considering the chilly and windy conditions outside--a navy sweater, dress shirt, and blue jeans--and then headed to Meghan, Abby, Katie, and Alana's room where everybody was congregating. That was fun because I had the opportunity to see Meghan drunk, which is always entertaining. At one point, she asked Alana to pass her a bottle of red wine complaining that she wasn't sufficiently drunk. Grimacing after a long draught that lasted perhaps three to four seconds, she stated, "That's not good at all."

"Well, you said that you wanted to get drunk," I couldn't resist the temptation. "You said nothing about titillating your pallet."

Meghan started to laugh at the word "titillate" for reasons that I think are obvious. More or less, everybody followed suit. What did you expect? We're students at one of the finest liberal arts colleges, the future of our country's intelligentsia, but we're not that mature.

Once that episode of hilarity drew to a close, we headed to the Goodge Street Station and hopped on to the Northern Line for Embankment. We disembarked and then headed across the Jubilee Bridge. Shannyn paused because the view from the bridge is nothing less than spectacular and she wanted to photograph it. I waited for her. Nobody else did, so in the end, Shannyn and I ended up sauntering up and down the South Bank together. We were able to see one of the most amazing fireworks displays I have ever seen in my life. Words cannot describe how beautiful and powerful it was. All I could say at the time was "I love this city."

As the residual brown and black clouds mingled with the strong scent of chordite drifted up the Thames, we headed back across the Thames. Originally, we were going to catch the Underground at Embankment, but Shannyn and I had both had our fill of crowds, and so we decided to catch a bus at Leicester Square and return to the Arran House that way. Once we arrived back, I headed upstairs where I talked with my mother for a while, worked on my journal, and then I headed for bed.

When I awoke this morning, I didn't do much of anything. I showered, dressed, munched on the remnants of the baton I yesterday purchased at Sainsbury's, and gulped down the last of my Diet Coke. (I suppose it's worth mentioning here that I've decided to switch from Coca Cola to Diet Coke, because I'd hate to have to go shopping for special shoes.) Rob, Dwight, Greg, and I went to a cheap baguette shop on Goodge Street for lunch, and then Dwight and I went to the British Museum, which is the last of the museums that Professor Rudalevige required us to visit.

I have to confess that I was really overwhelmed by the sheer size and diversity of the collection at the British Museum. I didn't read any of the descriptive or explanatory placards or study any of the exhibits with any great degree of care. There were great granite sarcophagi from Late Dynastic Egypt, ornate funerary masks from Papua New Guinea, colossal Assyrian wall reliefs depicting the bloody recreations of that civilization, all sorts of odds and ends from King George III's library, and of course the (infamous) Elgin Marbles. For two hours, I pretty much wandered up and down the galleries, staring at everything with pupils bigger than tea saucers. I think if I had remained for any longer than I did, my head would have started to hurt because it was so difficult to wrap my mind around everything.

That's not to say that I spent all that time among the relics of millenia of human civilization and an intelligent thought or two didn't occur to me. My mind spend a significant amount of time turning over Erica's passionate arguments about the repatriation of the Elgin Marbles, even as I was standing before them. I wouldn't say that I have decided whether they should or shouldn't be returned to the Greeks, but I was struck by the sterility of the gallery in which they were on display. The ceilings were high, standing twenty or thirty feet tall; and the walls and floors were plain and painted the most dismal shade of battleship gray. It reminded me of an enormous warehouse in the States, except the walls were lined with these intricately carved, incredibly old friezes depicting battles between the Amazons and the Greeks, the birth of Athens, and other important episodes in Greek history instead of crates or boxes. I know that considering the considerable levels of damage they have endured here and when they were still attached to the Parthenon, they can't be restored to their original home, but I should very much like to see them as they were when Pericles first unveiled them to the Athenian public. The awe, the wonder, the novelty.

Another (somewhat morbid) thought: when I was walking through a gallery in which they have all manners of mummies from every dynasty and period in Egyptian history, I wondered over how awful it would be for my body one distant day in the future to be exhumed, examined, and put on display in some museum. Could you imagine the young cockroaches, dressed in purple and white school uniforms, their crusty brown faces pressed against the glass while they wonder over the queerly shaped remains before them? It certainly reminds one of their morality; I couldn't help but think of Percy Shelley's famous sonnet:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Like the pharoah for whom Shelley titled the sonnet, each of us spend our lives erecting "monuments" that will bear our names into the future, relics to remind future generations that once we lived here. Ultimately, though, we have no more control over how we are remembered than we do over the weather--particularly, if we're discussing English weather--or the seasons; and often, the monuments we erect to our own memories crumble beneath the steely heel of Time. Mummies can be destroyed, ground up into powder for fertilizer or to make a quack's remedy. Statues can be defaced. Codices and papyri make excellent kindling. Children disappoint. Grandchildren can't remember our faces. Great-grandchildren don't know our names. And "the lone and level sands stretch far away..."

I will not try to depress you any further. It is certainly food for thought, and if I were to remain this train of thought to its final destination, I would say that this situation presents us with two (not necessarily conflicting) alternatives from which we may choose. We can choose to invest our energies and our ambitions in some entity or purpose higher than we are, a phenomenon that is not subject to the dictates of Time. Call it "God," if you are so inclined. We can also decide to live for the present, squeezing every drop of significance from every second that Happenstance has given us. But as I said, I don't want to travel to that station. Not today.

Anyway, Dwight and I left the British Museum around three o' clock and returned to the Arran House. Tonight the plan, which I reserve the right to alter at any moment, is: (1) prepare and eat dinner; (2) work on journals; and (3) relax and enjoy one of my last days in London. I trust that everybody is doing well. If any of you want to contact me, just give me a ring on Skype or AIM. I will try to be not-so-foreboding when you call. I promise.