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Where to Go with a Week to Go

My habitual clock is telling me that I'll be getting on a plane tomorrow morning to head back home. My calendar, though, reminds me that I still have six days to go. My heart, caught in the middle, is heavy.

So are my eyelids. I'll wake tomorrow to a full weekend to myself in one of the world's great cities. I should be out and about. I'll probably just sleep.

Maybe this time will be better. I've spent a few weekends in London on past trips. With all of the work there is to do on these trips and the difficulty of adjusting to a drastically new time zone, I'm usually too sleep deprived come the weekend to do anything but sleep.

This week has been a little different. I'm still working 14+ hours a day, but I've managed to get at least five or six hours sleep each evening.

So, where to go on the morrow? I can always do the tried and true. The British Museum. St. Paul's. Walk from Hyde Park to Green Park to Buckingham Palace. The Tate Modern. The National Gallery.

Ah, the gallery. Something about the National Gallery reminds me of Thelma. Maybe it's the aesthetics or passion of the place. I'm drawn there every time I visit this city. I've stolen time out of the day on occasion just to drop in for a few minutes.

It was hot and muggy the first time I visited. It must have been Labor Day weekend or thereabouts in 2005. The air in the gallery was warm and still. The sound of a thousand tourists waving their collection guides as fans created an undertone of discontent. Hot and tired, I turned a corner looking for a place to sit. I found this instead:

I was immediately overcome. I felt cool. I felt a breeze. I staggered backwards to a bench just opposite the painting where I sat and stared. People crossed between me and the painting, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It felt distant and familiar.

After eventually reading the descriptive placard, I realized why I felt the way I did. The subject is Lake Keitele, one of 187,888 lakes in Finland. More than once on my mission to Finland I stood on the shores of similar lakes staring out at the water, trees, clouds and sky.

Look at the horizon in the painting. If you've been to Finland, you know those are clouds, not mountains, rising above the trees.

The artist is Akseli Gallen-Kallela. One of my prized possessions is his illustrated version of Kalevala, the Finnish national epic.

So, perhaps tomorrow I'll head off to the National Gallery to visit an old friend. Then again, it is already 2:50 in the morning. Maybe I'll just sleep.
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