Portobello Road

This weekend I wore my Reeboks to shreds and gave myself a blister to boot, trooping in Notting Hill to see the famous Portobello Market. I was sorely tempted by an antique map of Northern Ireland, only £20 ($40), but then I remembered that I am an impoverished PhD student and chose to shop in my price range (an Italian language copy of Stephen King's Cujo for only 50 pence--a buck!). People constantly asked me for directions or to take their photos, which made me feel both authentically English-appearing as well as kindly.

Tate Modern

The Tate Modern is a former power station on the southern bank of the Thames across from St. Paul's, crossed by the Millenium Bridge footpath. It holds the Tate Collection post-1900. It was interesting; I like certain forms of modern art very much, and in fact am obsessed with Kandinsky and respond very well to 1960s Pop artists like Lichtenstein as well as Dadaists from the teens and twenties. Only one Kandinksy unfortunately, and very few Dadaists. I was amused to see how little regarded my least favoroite forms of modern art seemed to be; the multiple fluorescent light installations and over-sized canvas pieces painted in a single color were quickly walked past. The Tate is also fortunate to have Piero Manzoni's Artist's Shit #4, in convenient canned form, and this also found few patrons! The Tate purchased this item in 2002 for about $45,000--the remaining pieces of Manzoni's original 90 cans are increasingly valuable as many of them are said to have exploded over the years!

Pork Faggots, Steak and Kidney Pie

Yes, this is what I have been eating this week. I have long loved steak and kidney pie (the Duke of Perth pub restaurant in Lakeview usually has them on the menu) but I had to try faggots for the name alone. It turns out they are related to haggis and other offal-based culinary creations--basically pork liver, pork, and traditionally pork cheek, rolled into what looks like Swedish meatballs (and sort of looks and tastes like a gamier Salisbry steak when it comes out of the oven). Very tasty!

Museum of London

The Museum of London is a cute little place right on the London town wall (one "exhibit" is simply a window, pointing out the spot where a Roman wall from the 1st century meets a 13th century tower!). It takes you through the prehistoric history of the Thames valley through Roman and medieval times up to the Great Fire. Very cool, very kid friendly--I was embarrassed when answering a computer pop quiz on patron saints, getting all the answers correct, and having it light up in full electronic jackpot mode as if I were at a casino! Maybe a little too kid-friendly there!

Tate Britain Gallery

Spent several hours here last weekend, very delightful, and the best organized gallery I have yet seen, entirely laid out in chronological order from the Middle Ages to 1900. My only complaint is that a few pieces are mounted behind such shiny reflective glass that there was simply no way to get a good view; unless what follows is salt water and tropical fish, there seems to be no need for the aquarium glass! I was especially struck by the Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt's 1952 piece, "Scattered Sheep: Our English Coasts." Taken by many as a comment on Britain's tendency toward isolationism, it was also seen as a rebuke to the clergy of the Church of England for being consumed by internal quarrels during this same time. The sheep certainly do seem bewildered!

Imperial War Museum

I live right nextdoor to this imposing edifice, immediately to the right of this pic, so given my own military service and my near-obsession with Napoleon and Frederick the Great, it was just a matter of time before I found myself lost here for five solid hours. It was a very powerful experience, with two whole floors devoted to "Crimes Against Humanity" and the Holocaust. I tended to disagree with quite a bit of the museum curators' point of view (I in fact do not think "any of us" could become genocides; I would posit that genocidal societies invariably are societies that devalue and subjugate women; once you subjugate 51%+ of your own population, it's much easier to begin sorting down those to kill; societies where women are not only equal but actually leaders are not ripe to become genocidal anytime soon it seems to me; etc, etc.). Also the snuff film sequence in the middle of the documentary, where we watch one Rwandan after another be slowly butchered, with a final close-up of a 12 year-old boy dying from a severe head gash, seemed to me to have the opposite effect of "sensitizing" us, especially after the documentary rather incredibly segues on from this to sing the praises of Fair Trade Coffee. I love Fair Trade Coffee, I endorse it unreservedly, but after watching the 12 year-old bleed out in close-up I simply wasn't in a very coffee kind of place, and the process of filming these graphic scenes always seems to skirt the edges of morality to me. Not to sound too harsh on the Imperial War Museum; it was in fact a very stirring experience that will remain with me long.

Mother Teresa's Dark Night of the Soul

A great deal of media coverage seems primed to hit over publication of Mother Teresa's private letters detailing her spiritual dryness over half a century of ministry. I tend to chalk this up to the classical "Dark Night of the Soul" idea, that those in regular and intimate communication with God don't always feel great about it, and that the mystery of suffering hits even the holiest among us. Some surprise is mentioned that Teresa seemed to feel this for so long, with no apparent respite, but I say that the problem with invading someone's private letters is that we don't know what went unrecorded, the single day of ecstasy or consolation so great that she didn't want to tell anyone about it.

The "Atheist Chic" movement is quick to say Teresa "realized" religion was a joke and that's why she spent half a century in spiritual pain. I would answer this with an only slightly less subversive idea; perhaps Teresa realized a great deal of pain over the lack of social justice in the world, specifically how the Christian Church contributes to much of this. Given the state of Christianity today, the days of mystics in ecstasy might well be finished, and perhaps this is a good thing. Running a hospice for AIDS victims is surely noble, but it might well cause one to reflect more on the type of "Christian morality" that influenced people's sexual decisions. Being the most famous nun in the world might well cause some painful doubt about the position of women in the world and in the church.

I don't mean to suggest that Teresa was tormented by a nagging, closeted liberalism, but rather that what we often dismiss as ideology might actually have a deeper spiritual significance that is unavoidable in the end. If one accepts the Natural Law framework that supports a theology of mystics and saintliness, the nagging subconscious realization that how Nature had been formally defined didn't seem to match everyday human reality might well cause anyone spiritual pain. Even a saint.