A Note on Where All the History Comes From

The boy ran past me, exclaiming a pure, unintelligible, yet blissful shriek as he gave chase to the pigeon. It still hasn't truly hit me, but at approximately that instant on that clear day on the Thames I acquired the slight inkling that I had arrived in London.

That day was of course just a hop skip and a jump down my barber's pole of time, yet I write about it as if it were a distant memory. A picture from a Facebook album, the modern equivalent of a Super 8 film, each one containing snippets of pure nostalgia. Each moment here feels like it's being lived in slow motion, as if I have more time to crawl into each second and breathe it in where I would normally rush past the seconds, never giving the effort to take them in.

Eddie Izzard, a friend to Britain and one of my favorite comedians, once said that Europe is "where all the history comes from." Having been here for several weeks, I can certainly understand that concept--everywhere I go I run into a castle! There's a certain charm to living in a city where there are streets that have seen the feet of millions of people for thousands of years. It makes me feel safer to know I'm not the only person to ever tread a particular path.

It snowed today. It wasn't the cheap slushy type a poor film director calls for, but the lavish, top-of-the-line stuff reserved for The Chronicles of Narnia or another epic adaptation. It's the most London's gotten in the past twenty years. All staggering five inches of it brought the city to its knees. I can only hope the same comes tomorrow. At least I was here for the first historic fall.

I'll make an attempt to update more often, but that can be difficult considering the traveling and work on my schedule for the next few weeks. At any rate, Cheers!