London, my London

The 390, a new old bus, from York Way to Notting Hill, plush and rich interiors, the same stone wall, iron-clad faces. There is a kind of world- weariness that is beyond the world.. From the sixth floor apartment you can see Camden to one side, King's Cross to the other. You sit with the elders, having grown old yourself, having always been old, I suppose. The man, fiercely intelligent, compassionate eyes, his teeth nearly falling out if he speaks too quickly. In a former time, he would speak in a quick dialect, racing through the words, leaving many out, and only four people in the whole world could comprehend what he was saying..In former times four people were enough. His self- contained flat is crammed with photographs, prints, computers, books ( dictionaries, archaeology, game theory, Aristotle), blue and white figurines, stone Buddhas and 19 th century nautical instruments. How did they orient themselves in those days? Ubo says we now live in a time when people hesitate when they speak to one another. His friend from seventy plus years ago would walk away dejected when he told him to go away because he had to study for his exams. So his friend just stood under the window and said, " let's talk from here". It is a blessing, says Ghazali, to be a stone for a stone is not nothing. To be a human, this particular human, even more so. To be an individual, ec-centric, like nothing else in the world, is a task, an opportunity. Freedom: the capacity for gratitude. That we can know something of ourselves, of other people.. I can't stomach any poetry today. Nazim Hikmet or Stanley Moss. The world of suffering redeemed by words or flowers!Sod it! Outside the church, past Denmark street, you note a tree curved into an S-shape. You walked here more than a quarter of a century ago and still it is the same. A cheese and tomato sarnie from the wb, great hidden secret of central London. Earlier, Lithuanian rye bread and pickled herrings, soya latte and some chocolate is all the poetry I need. I need no books, sentences, lost gazes. Perhaps Edna oBrien later. On the way back the 1970s fading orange light on the top of side walls, the crown of branchless trees, the high windows of empty apartments, makes you think of Huizinga. The light is dreamy, yet fantastically clear and the sky is full of so many purple clouds you stop to think how each day is different from the other, even as it recalls other times. Somewhere, deep down, London's underground rivers still flow. ' The East river, still musical, distantly related to the North sea'