Three Months in Albion

19.6.12 (Seattle, Pre-departure) - This morning, the coffee is bitter. I don't see Diana try it as she puts on her jacket. It could have been the milk, in the fridge during the ten-day holiday to Nipomo, CA -- a visit to my parents and their new home -- or it could have been the anticipation of leaving. The crows outside our window make devilish discourse. When I kiss Diana goodbye on her way to work this morning I think, the last thing I will do for my wife for the three months I'm in the UK is to make her coffee.

The condo is a dumping ground of objects for which I have no room. Books are lined in an arrogant row, their covers, colored gold or crimson or shale, wanting to be reconsidered. You do not make the cut, Pynchon; neither do you, McGann. I pack Finnegans Wake and a translation of Alfred the Great's biography that I've read about forty times. Clothes I have no need for form a football sized pile next to the books. Excess cords for electronic things are tangles on the couch cushions. I fit the rest into the seventy-five liter Baltoro backpack and take a photo. I really want these things to not define who I am, but they do. You know that game people play: you're stranded on a desert island and can only bring five items with you? No one takes five items. Realistically, what you bring looks something like this.


Albion is an old name for Great Britian, and according to the 12th century historiographer Geoffrey of Monmouth, then it contained only a few giants. Today, its inhabitants are perhaps of smaller stature, but as fierce as giants. Pop in to Waterloo Station during rush hour and you'll know what I mean. They say people from the States are always working, but Londoners are always going. Last year, in August, Diana and I took a brief ten day work-and-pleasure trip to London, and we fell in love with the city. Wherever you go, there's a bus station, rail station or Tube station nearby. London is built so its people can move.

I will be flying in to Heathrow tomorrow afternoon, but this time I won't be staying long. My destination is Cambridge, and my purpose of visit is work. I'll be there two months, then I have two weeks of sight-seeing, and then two more weeks at Oxford to finish my dissertation research. England, I'm almost there.