who's afraid of virginia woolf?

well i am, for one. dear god. it has clearly become my pastime to sit in theaters and talk to old men when i am exhilirated by those players on the stage. old men and kate, sharing together in the delight. tonight it was the same, as i sat in my seat and floated above, filled with shock, horror, enjoyment, confusion. between the acts, the elderly man next to me seemed to know exactly how i felt, once again, and off we went bantering about this and that when really what we just wanted to get up and shout thank god it is so good. kathleen turner is a god.

but on the topic of virginia woolf, slightly, i suppose i should briefly explain the name of my blog. i don't know why i put it so idiotically, after all i have wanted to explain the silly name since i started the bloody thing, but yes. here i will unsubtley do a brief number.

dear ms. woolf wrote a short essay which i greatly adore about a london walk. in "street haunting" (read it, read it now -- it is much more worth reading than any of the words to follow), woolf chronicles her quest through the london streets to find a pencil, her perfect pencil. i will not be a silly twit and relay the details of the walk, because that is just boring. but after being here for a month, i can't tell you how true her opening sentence is: "No one perhaps has ever felt passionately towards a lead pencil. But there are circumstances in which it can become supremely desirable to possess one; moments when we are set upon having an object, an excuse for walking half across London between tea and dinner." now for me, recently, it has been more between my anguished addiction to lost and a pathetic piece of chicken that i attempt to cook myself around 8, but truly. it is as though during those hours i feel compelled to rush out my door and just go walking, god knows where. yes, i hate the early darkness, but there is something comforting about it in this city, knowing that you will come back home to warmth and familiarity after rushing about going absolutely nowhere for a few hours. the rushing about is clearly better than the coming home, but that's another story.

anyway, i have been haunting the streets of london, perhaps not as well as ms. woolf, but perhaps with as much enjoyment. i was lucky enough to have a familiar wanderer join me this past tuesday, when ms. libby mooers arrived in london on route to uganda, a much different locale indeed. after a quick runaround of the wagamamas and the big ben, libster and i sat down in green park next to the buckingham palace for a glorious joint, in the glorious sun, and she exclaimed : "KATE. do you realize, we are walking in a park in LONDON." and her face was beaming, and i said shit. yes, this is pretty remarkable, when you step back to think about it. as we searched for the tate in a hazed state, we asked a businessman for directions, and he whipped out a map from his briefcase. we found this absurd, and then came the tate, and it was difficult to take it all in. libby made me write down in her book the explination i had for the two pictures that "i" (iggy) put up on "my" (iggy's) facebook group: "the first one is the glory, the second is the scandal." i write it here so that it can be written in two books. this is not a book.

later that day i visited moses at oxford, and was somewhat shocked to see 20 year olds served food in a magnificent hall. a candlelit dinner, with a waitstaff to boot. i was reminded of my silly little catering job, and thought wow, but if i were serving these kids i would attempt to accidentally spill on their laps as much as humanly possible. of course i wanted to this for my catering job as well, but i have anger management problems. but also, rich british people are simply insufferable. no connection possible. oxford made me slightly confused, simply because in my mind it was the place where auden, where names of greatness sprouted everywhere, but everything seemed so dead. like, dead - stuck in the past. obviously there was a grotesque fascination mingled with the horror. and yet, it was utterly beautiful. but oxford was wonderful because moses was wonderful and concluded my day of intoxications with four shots of tequila and god knows what else, and then a long drunken conversation about how, well god knows what i can't remember a damned thing. but as "only connect" seems to be my thesis for everything in life these days, it was probably about missed connections and how much i love successful ones.

ah yes. i do hope that "who's afraid of virginia woolf" will actually snap me out of my lost daze. for the past week my brain has snapped in two as i have succumbed to my need to fall into a pit of obsession with bad television. the suitemates suggested it, the life fell apart, oh lost. oh lost. but no, i must get back on track, and i will. no more lost. well perhaps one more episode, but afterwards i will continue to see plays, intoxicate myself in parks, read anything and everything, destroy my lungs, understand british people, and haunt streets after dark.