{"id":338,"date":"2004-09-30T20:05:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-01T00:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=338"},"modified":"2005-12-06T13:14:31","modified_gmt":"2005-12-06T18:14:31","slug":"for-those-who-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/for-those-who-love","title":{"rendered":"For those who love"},"content":{"rendered":"

One light rail, two underground lines, one national rail, one plane, a monorail, and then a 35-mile drive in my Element, and I am home, safe and sound, from London. It hasn’t been a great day, but I probably don’t feel as bad as the executives at Merck do<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t a good trip, to put it mildly. The conference was fruitful enough, but the convention center, ExCeL<\/a>, was located in a pretty empty section of town so far from what we think of as London that I was stuck in my hotel room every night. I guess I could’ve gone out to the city for some fun\/sightseeing in the evenings, but it would’ve involved the aforementioned two underground lines and that light rail, and I was a bit worried about how safe that would be after dark.<\/p>\n

So I got to England for my first time since I was 5, and I spent 4 hours sightseeing on Monday. Oh, well.<\/p>\n

Here are a bunch of pix from that little sightseeing meander:<\/p>\n

A monument<\/a> outside Buckingham Palace. Another view<\/a> of it. A gate<\/a>, and another<\/a> at the same. The front gate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The monument<\/a> at a distance.<\/p>\n

A WWI artillery memorial<\/a> near the corner of Hyde Park.<\/p>\n

The Princess Di<\/a> memorial fountain in Hyde Park. This was REALLY disappointing. I was hoping for something more visually stimulating than a circular fountain with granite tiles that somehow represented the ups-and-downs of her life.<\/p>\n

Reformer’s Tree<\/a>, or where it used to stand, in Hyde’s Park. From what I gather, this was a big place of assembly, back in The Day, but got burned down in 1882.<\/p>\n

The Marble Arch<\/a>, which has its share of history<\/a>. Everything there does, in a way that I simply don’t feel here in America. As I read that Stephenson book during the trip (only 200 pages so far), I marveled over the idea of being somewhere so steeped in history. I guess part of it is that I’m used to New York, where so much of the city is geared around skyscrapers. It doesn’t breathe quite the same way as the foreign cities I’ve visited these past few years (Budapest, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Auckland, Paris).<\/p>\n

The Dwight Eisenhower<\/a> memorial in Grosvenor Square.<\/p>\n

The FDR<\/a> memorial in the square. Looks like “Count FDRula” or something, but that’s how they want to remember him.<\/p>\n

I went to the square to see the FDR memorial, since it was on my city map, and I thought it’d be nice to check out. When I saw it, I noticed a weird monument<\/a> off on the east side of the square, so I went to take a look at it. The inscription read, “GRIEF IS THE PRICE WE PAY FOR LOVE”. I was still puzzled at what it was there for. Then I looked down<\/a>. It’s the Sept. 11 memorial garden<\/a>. Evidently, part of one of the girders from the WTC is buried under the stone. The inscription is a poem I’d never read before, by Henry Jackson Van Dyke<\/a>: “Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is not.”<\/p>\n

I’m home now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One light rail, two underground lines, one national rail, one plane, a monorail, and then a 35-mile drive in my Element, and I am home, safe and sound, from London. It hasn’t been a great day, but I probably don’t feel as bad as the executives at Merck do. It wasn’t a good trip, to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “For those who love”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-5s","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9016,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-133-what-if-we-give-it-away","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":0},"title":"Episode 133 – What If We Give It Away?","author":"Gil","date":"September 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show #133: Stona Fitch\/Rory Flynn - What If We Give It Away? \"One of my favorite things is to take a character, figure out what's most important to them, and then take it away and see what they do.\" Stona Fitch joins the show to talk about balancing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"ThirdRail_cover_277x419","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/ThirdRail_cover_277x419.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2250,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/georgia-rules","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":1},"title":"Georgia Rules","author":"Gil","date":"August 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I haven't written anything about the war in Georgia because I don't know enough about the circumstances and history, and I figure there are plenty of other places you could go for uninformed ranting. Over at Reason's Hit & Run blog, there's a good piece by Matt Welch on how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10330,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-217-vanessa-sinclair","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":2},"title":"Episode 217 – Vanessa Sinclair","author":"Gil","date":"May 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 217: Vanessa Sinclair \"Nothing's as static as people make it out to be.\" Make psychoanalysis subversive again! Vanessa Sinclair joins the show to talk about her new book, Switching Mirrors. We get into psychoanalysis, art and the occult, magical thinking (good and bad), Vanessa's use of cut-up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/01-vanessa-sinclair-414x620.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/01-vanessa-sinclair-414x620.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/01-vanessa-sinclair-414x620.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2247,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/morning-sun","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":3},"title":"Morning Sun","author":"Gil","date":"August 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a comparatively slow day at the Official Newspaper of Gil Roth: a review of the new book by James Wood, How Fiction Works, a review of an anthology on New Criticism, and a brief history (with slideshow) of Art Deco. So I guess I oughtta flip over to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":480,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/train-in-rain","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":4},"title":"Train in Rain","author":"Gil","date":"February 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"On Thursday, I went up to Burlington, MA, near Boston, on business. Here's what I wrote during the train rides there and back.Taking the train up from NYC to Boston today to cover a pharmaceutical facility's ribbon-cutting. I was supposed to drive up, stay over, and visit another site tomorrow,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":740,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/update","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":5},"title":"Update","author":"Gil","date":"November 3, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry to be outta touch, dear readers! The internet connection at the hotel is dodgier than I thought. Plus, I've been working at the conference and then dining with clients in the evenings.But the conference is all over, so it's time for sightseeing and souvenir-shopping! 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