Travel Journal 10: The Welsh invade London

[tinhuviel]

Wednesday 17 May, 2006

At night the city is no more full of dreams than at any other time. That's where people go wrong. They think that the daytime city, full of money and work and people who know where they're going, is the real one. But I look all the time for the real city, and I know it's not as simple as that. It's not simple at all.

Comments

[lausa]

I have grokked your travelogue immensely, "grok" being a word I've not lately seen or heard. Especially like your ruminations on the city as a living organism in its own right. Am beginning to understand your fascination with Shriekback (the age difference here accounts for a lot). May your future be filled with the opportunity for many more journeys!

[tinhuviel]

Thank you so much.
Y'know I'd be happy to send you a Shriekback primer, if you're so inclined to listened.

[m0usegrrl]

To me, London was like a gigantic organism with a very thin epidermis that one can ease through to find the wonders therein. A city that large, like New York, which falls into this category, but not as strongly as London, at some point no longer depends on humans as individuals; rather, it is its own Being, powered by the energy drawn from the human whole from which it feeds.

YES. exactly. that is how i relate to large cities like New York and London, and why i feel so comfortable in them. San Francisco is not quite like that, but it has its own sense of Being that's as much its own energy as it is the deep Magicks of the land it's on.

[tinhuviel]

If you haven't heard Sacred City, then, you need to. I think you'd really understand it since you get the same impression I got.

[m0usegrrl]

no, i haven't heard that song -- but from what Barry wrote above, i agree, i think i need to.

[tinhuviel]

It's a whole album full of songs about the city. I'll send you a copy. I start my job this week, so I may be addled, so please prod my memory if you don't hear from me by Wednesday.

[falkenna]

Yes, I still maintain that the fraud that is Tinhuviel was exposed by her love of a place where humanity is rampant in all its noisy, greedy, horrible teeming millions, where The Lady Nature is despised, denigrated and literally trodden upon with utmost disrespect.

I can enjoy a (brief) trip to London, but it depends on being able to flow smoothly in my own protective shell -- not be responsible for an important, time-limited and complex excursion, with added Chinese water-torture. If anything pierces my London bubble, it makes me feel like the girl in the Theatre des Vampires -- fallen, naked, and being fed upon by dozens of ravenous, evil mouths.

London is the psychic vampire, not B. (All cities potentially do this to me. Brighton drained me for years until B gave me the key to building a Brighton bubble.)

[tinhuviel]

Like draws like. Perhaps that's the root of City Fascination and why most psychic vampires are city dwellers. Believe me, if I didn't own my home in the boonies, I'd be in an apartment in a city.

[janalyson]

You're not going to believe me, but I agree with both. A big city does have an energy, a heartbeat that in which flows the souls of all who live there. There is a fascination I have with large cities. But you do have to keep your distance, or "wear a bubble" to protect yourself. If you get to involved, stay too long, the "psychic vampire" of the city will try to devour you. I love to feel the energy of a city, but the longer I stay, I feel a need to run.

I thought San Francisco was like that, but she, and exotic vampire, hides any evil by her beauty. I couldn't describe it, I absolutely loved northern California, but after a while I needed to get home, yet still feeling the pull of San Fran. Three years later, I still feel the pull to go back.

I know I have to see London. It has called for me to visit for a long time. Even if Falkenna wasn't there, I would feel that. London needs me to visit. And I will. Maybe September? We'll see.

[tinhuviel]

Psychic vampires tend to have natural bubbles in order to contain the energy pulled from others. Some people can break through and pull from them. But, to live in a city, to just sit and observe and work in conjunction with the nature of city, that's a psychic vampire's dream.

You should definitely go to London. I plan on going back myself, as soon as I possibly can.