England's Dreaming

I often experience a present-nostalgia, so I’m going to describe that a bit; I'll use my trip to London as an example.

Dream London:

It’s beautiful here, and nothing can ever go wrong. There is life everywhere, and the city is pulsating with a million brilliant creative minds flowing at once, all meshing together and forming a flow of something bigger than the Thames. A dream state maybe, a beautiful golden gaze haze. No, not golden..grey, but a grey as good as gold because it is London and in London nothing can ever go wrong. At Kings Cross there are crackheads and whores, but they’re not sad and they’re not really twitching, they’re dancing. They’re not really sad because in London no one is sad. And in London biscuits are better than the finest meal created (this is actually true, I swear, English biscuits are the best thing anywhere and everywhere.). In London ones feet do not get wet, and one does not get cold, one does not get hungry, and one has the entire world..the entirety of everything at his or her feet. When one is in London one is everywhere at once and nowhere at once..because in London everything is perfect, always.

Real London:

It’s probably not beautiful to many people, because London is dirty. London is old and dirty and always wet and covered in moss (I find the moss quite charming, though). And I don’t think you’ll find any more creative minds in London than you will anywhere else. Londoners are mostly moody and glum..probably because of the near constant grey skies and the ridiculous prices of everything. Things aren’t at ones feet when in London, but stuck behind a glass and staring you mockingly in the face. Unless you’re one of the few snotty business peoples or famous everything is just out of your reach. Maybe all you’ll have to look forward to are a freezing bedsit and pot noodles. And if you don’t have the right shoes (which I didn’t) your feet will be constantly wet and cold and blistered.

When I was in London I felt I was walking on clouds, but the truth is I was walking on wet pavement for nearly ten hours a day in ballet flats. When I was walking the streets of London I could have sworn I was hearing music constantly, what it really was, though, was sirens. When I was walking around Topshop I felt as stylish as Kate Moss, but the truth was I looked like a homeless American kid trying to look like Kate Moss in Target clothes…etc.

I think that nostalgic view of London was created by my dreaming of it for so long. I had made a London of my own up and I refused to see anything else. Or it could have been delirium from eating the hostel’s free oatmeal breakfast and almost nothing else for 10 days (so I could have enough money for the tube and Topshop). Anyway, whatever it was, it wasn’t the real London. And the London I remember now is even less real than the London I experienced. The memories of the blistered feet and hunger pangs have nearly faded now, and almost all that’s left it the poetic beauty of the stuffy and dirty underground, moss, and my hostel-friends.