Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Driving East

I will wake up tomorrow morning, on Father’s Day, alone in Cheyenne without my family. I say this matter-of-factly. Designated days have only a light hold on me. An unexpected business trip that means being gone on Father’s Day? No problem. I'm not much for ceremony. More than once we have marked Father’s Day by splurging for a hotdog at Costco while filling up the minivan on a road trip. (Surely, Cheyenne has a Costco.) If I wake up emotional tomorrow morning, it's not because I'm alone on Father’s Day. It will be because of the cocktail of emotions I drank today. —— Driving across Wyoming was beautiful. Everything below the horizon looked groomed and green. The grass, the hills. the forests. A sea of green dusted with flecks of distant snowfields and antelope. (So many antelope.) Above the horizon, wild white and stormy black scratched across brilliant blue. The kind of sea and sky that softens your heart and tricks your mind.  I pulled off the highway at Little America f
2 comments
Read more

Three Wonders

I know the tradition began earlier, but I associate it with the Carmen Red Oldsmobile station wagon. There was also the Toyota van, but the Oldsmobile days were the magic ones. Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we would literally go. (Also through the valley, past the waterfalls, over the hill, and along the lake.) Neilan family Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa's house. The house where my mom was raised, where aunts, uncles, and cousins were just a few houses or blocks away. The two story house where on any ordinary day you entered directly into the kitchen, sat at the kitchen table, and just listened to my mom and her parents talk as an assortment of her brothers would inevitably call or stop by. But on Christmas Eve, the house was already packed to the brim with family, presents, food, and laughter. So much laughter. It was a wonderland as a child to be surrounded by people who loved you and were excited to see you. The house was warm and the large w
2 comments
Read more

Block Facebook Ads with CSS

(This is my experience evaluating Facebook for my daughter.  It turned into a technical exercise in CSS.  If you want the full narrative, read on.  If you just want the steps for using CSS to block ads on Facebook, jump ahead .) Emma asked permission to create a Facebook account so she can keep in touch with some of her cousins and friends.  Emma has been very responsible using our family computer and does a good job keeping our rules about what to do and how to behave online.  So, Thelma and I decided that it was probably OK once I had a chance to check out and become familiar with the privacy settings and parental controls. Even though I work for an online business and Facebook is a frequent topic of conversation when it comes to reaching out to and retaining online customers, I have to admit that I have rarely used the service.  I created an account for business purposes to become a "fan" of a client so I could keep tabs on some social marketing campaigns.  That's it.
3 comments
Read more