MEMEHUNTER

I, Londoner

Man am I tired.

Took my mate on a tour of London 'by night' yesterday evening. This city does well in the dark. Big river, bright lights, night owls drinking coffee, clubbers clubbing, pubs chucking out. Looking down the Thames from the Hungerford Bridge (or whatever that new bridge is called), the dome of St Paul's glowing softly just over there, the red oh-cross-oh opposite, lights on both banks reflecting in the water, the National Theatre blinking in the distance.

I think the city makes a great deal more sense from the water. You can see how it grew. Where the roads go. Stuff like that. I do like this city. I like being part of it, feeling part of it. London is nothing without the people in it; more than any other city I've been in, it's built to get people from one place to another. The places you go through, the various locales, quarters, sub-quarters all, essentially, waypoints en route to somewhere else in itself a waypoint. London as meta-journey. We travel for the sake of travelling. Someone has to use the busses. The tube needs passengers to survive. The roads exist only to be walked. London, ultra memeplex, requires that her children travel. So we travel. Who are we to argue? We have no more choice in the matter than blood cells.

That's why I like it. Step into the stream. Float like a corpuscle. Let the beat push you.

And if the penalty is always feeling alien everywhere else you go... so be it. At least city folk know how to cross a road properly.

posted by Memehunter @ 1:39 PM