between the rock and the cold, cold sea

The plan for tomorrow is:

1. Make sponges for pear sponge cake.

2. Make (highly experimental) treacle gingerbread for the care and feeding of friends.

3. Hope like hell the treacle gingerbread is edible. Successfully not blackened mess!

4. Translate two more pages of the French Article From Hell.

5. Finish one of the two non-fic pieces I have ongoing.

6. Turn one of the two drafts I already have into a finished piece.

7. Stack piles of books-to-research more neatly. (Followed, most likely, by 7a: explain to other residents of this house that yes, this is as good as it gets unless I get a Tardis or a magic wardrobe.)

8. Wrap the things-to-be-wrapped.

9. Try not to freeze.

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This is enough to be going on with, right?

The most interesting thing about coming home has been the sense of absolute dislocation.

I find myself missing Greece. It grew on me, in ways weird and strange and hard to comprehend. I miss the rhythms of speech, the rhythms of life, the clamour of traffic and the ringing of bells from the churches at evening and the stray dogs wandering from sunlight to shade. Pale faces seem dull and out of place, English harsh and sharp, Ireland too green and damp, claustrophobic between the grey clouded sky. There's a part of me now that feels as though it understands Greece, at least a little: a part of me where pieces of it had taken root and begun to grow.

You can't understand a place until you've lived in it. And even then, you understand it only shallowly, in fewer dimensions than it truly exists. I don't understand the complex interrelationships of country and language, nationality and religion, sound and sense, that stretches from north-eastern Italy through Bosnia-Herzegovinia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia and Armenia. Until I stayed in Thessaloniki, I didn't even know it was there to understand. I didn't understand how different the treed mountains of northern Greece are from the sharp, dusty mountains of the southern mainland - or how alike. Or how the plains of Thessaly lie between the mountains and the sea, so oddly flat in such a mountainous country, until I'd been bussed across them. Or what it means to live in a climate where one really can live mostly out of doors, where one needs a roof less than one needs shade.

Or what it means to see a Byzantine fortress which had been converted to a modern prison, and only turned over to the Ministry of Culture in 1991, and wander around the insides practically alone in the noon heat, one's view of the sky reduced to the blue directly overhead. Or to stop inside a Greek Orthodox church one evening to get out of the heat, and in the chanting of the service watch parishioners coming and going, making the rounds of icons, rocking a pram, taking a call on their mobile, solemnity combined with movement and a sense of the sacred space being a little like a neighbour's house.

Greek culture is full of obnoxious nationalist sentiment. It's deeply misogynistic, a church- and family-centred chauvinism that goes bedrock deep. And the ubiquity of its militarisation made me deeply uncomfortable. On the other hand, I've never met so many people willing - even eager - to help in the course of a month before. The kindness of strangers is often overlooked, but it is the thing about Greece that touched me the most deeply, and that I will remember longest.

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In other news, I am now officially a postgraduate student of Classics, with a shiny new student card and library borrowing privileges. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to handle this year, without the sanity-saving presence of a ready-made peer group in classes. On the other hand, there are still a few people who haven't disappeared to pastures green - for now - so we'll see if I manage not to become even more isolated and strange than I am already.

I need to start thinking and planning again. Maybe soon.

I arrived home at 1100 hours on Saturday, and promptly crashed.

Today is the first day I've been properly awake during daylight. And even then, I didn't wake up till well after noon.

I believe I've already mentioned how fabulous are matociquala, stillsostrange, et alia, so I shan't belabour the point. (Except to say, guys? You're welcome in my home any time.)

New York is large. Also obscenely full of traffic, people, and rushing. Not a restful city. And bloody hell, hot.

It, and the hole I wore in my shoe from walking, was more than worth it for the museums, though. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is freaking incredible. The Greek and Roman and Cypriot galleries were so familiar they felt like coming home (the Dipylon vase! The Cesnola krater! A pillar from the temple of Artemis at Sardis! An entire room of wallpaintings in the Third Style!) and Asian and Near Eastern galleries which I managed to work through on my first, shorter visit were striking. The Buddhas - large, impressive, ancient. Shiva and Krishna and Brahma, fantastic in stone and ceramic and bronze, sculpted to seem alive and moving. Ceramics from China, included several of men and camels, whose essential camel-ness is vibrant, ornery, and pissed.

Two days later, my second visit started with the Egyptian galleries. My biases kept me looking for the Greco-Roman stuff, but I had sufficient smattering of knowledge to be seriously impressed with the breadth of the collection. Unfortunately, several of the more interesting pieces were acquired by purchase, but there is more than enough material with its provenance clearly marked to make me happy and wish I had months upon months to go through the collections. I was impressed by the display from a tomb which included linens and linen storage chests, and there were also linen hairnets and headpieces from the Greco-Roman period.

From the Egyptian gallery, I made my way through Venetian and Renaissance to Arms and Armour. The European medieval stuff is impressive, and clearly popular, but in the side galleries there are far more interesting displays from around the world. I approved especially of the Ottoman and Persian displays, but the Tibetan one, with its full set of armour and horse-pieces, and the some of the Central Asian and Indian ones, were also fascinating. So too were the Japanese samurai displays, but I was a little disappointed by the focus on the arms and armour of the upper class (well, I suppose it is a museum of Art, and not history proper). I was briefly enthralled by very decorative smallswords and an original 16th century fencing doublet, before starvation hit and I was driven to the lowest level for cafeteria food.

After food, I was disappointed to find the Islamic galleries closed for renovations. However, musical instruments proved fascinating, if not as well-provided with context as I, a muscial ignoramus, could've wished. But very pretty! A brief diversion through Actual Art and a visit to the gift shop meant it was 1400 and I'd spent nearly four hours inside (and more on my feet, having set out at nine with the intention of photographing the obelisk, which I achieved, although it might have been better at dawn). So, via the zoo (wherein I spent another pleasant, but foot-hurting hour, complete with exuberant snow-leopard) I walked back to the hostel and fell over.

I may have had dinner in the so-called "Irish pub" nearby first. Possibly that was after a nap. I'm not really sure.

Between my two visits to the MMOA, I went to the Museum of Natural History. That was Wednesday. I arrived shortly before opening, and left, again, about 1400.

The joy of discovery is negated somewhat by solitude. On the other hand, marching through the endless and fascinating displays - particularly the Peoples of the World exhibits and the Margaret Mead Peoples of the Pacific gallery - nearly killed me. I'm sad I didn't fork out the extra cash to see the Travelling the Silk Road exhibition, but, well. After Peoples, and Fossils, and Mammals, and chelonians, and birds, and and and! I was near death, and didn't even go into the Planetarium. Instead, I fortified myself with a hot dog in the basement café, and set out to find Barnes and Noble on Broadway.

The history section in that bookshop is a sad and desperate disappointment. On the other hand, I picked up four SFF titles and would have gone for more except for having to carry them back to the hostel. And onto the plane. As it was, my luggage was within .4 kg of its limit.

Broadway and Times Square were also disappointing. The billboards, the obvious police presence, and the crowds - not as crowded as I'd expected, actually: I've had more trouble trying to walk down Grafton St. in tourist season - the sticky heat, and the dirt that seems to smear everything made it all seem rather tacky, as though it was trying to go for Excessive and Overwhelming and coming up half-heartedly short.

On the other hand, I was tired and thirsty and pissed-off at my blistered heel, so my impressions may have been less than charitable.

From Times Square, I went to the New York Public Library, which matociquala had recommended. For which thank you! It is a fantastic building, in grandly neo-Classical style, with an inner silence which my by-then buzzing head sorely needed. I tried to look at the small exhibit on mapping New York, but sadly my energy gave rather out, and I had to find a chair to sit down for half an hour or so.

I didn't actually venture very far during my time in New York. I knew what I wanted to see, which were the museums, and I made sure to walk to them (except for the AMNH, which had a subway right outside its door), because you best see a city from on foot. Even if it does kill your feet, you get a feel for it a lot better than in taxis or on buses. My hostel was two blocks away from Times Square, and reasonably conveniently located to the museums (what's a couple of miles' walk, after all?) so I didn't actually need to go far.

And by the time I was finished in the museums and such, I didn't actually want to go far. Exhaustion does rather blunt the explorative instinct.

Friday I spent moving from one café to another, trying to stay relatively cool and keep my feet from screaming at me, until it was time to catch a shuttle bus to the airport. I think it'll take more than mere curiosity to get me to go back to New York the city. I didn't much like it. There is neither rest nor silence anywhere I could see. Also, rigidly straight lines in cities are seriously wrong. Inorganic. Cities should be organic, and twisty.

Yeah. I have biases.

New England, on the other hand? That seems to be a nice set of places.

Before I forget:

Io, Saturnalia!

Enjoy role reversal, drunkeness, orgies, good food and the giving of small gifts this December 17th. In proper Roman fashion.

Hot. Sweltering.

It's very interesting, though. And internets here are expensive, so I'll just say I've been to Europe's biggest bookshop, wandered around Covent Garden, seen the British Museum, St Paul's Cathedral - the Whispering Gallery is fabulous - the tiny remains of the Mithraeum, walked down the Thames to the Tower and walked all around the outside, walked up to Horse Guards and seen the poor soldiers sweltering in the heat, walked around to Trafalgar Square and ate at a place calling itself "The Texas Embassy Cantina". Lot of walking. Now I'm off to do some more.

Good thing the underground is everywhere, though.