london

it was this week five years ago that i arrived at the waterloo station in london, off the chunnel train from paris, exhausted from another train i'd ridden the night before and badly in need of a shower.  the morning and afternoon had been spent in a semi-nap at the foot of the eiffel tower after a terrifying attempt to ride the elevator to the top of that monstrous erection, followed by a confused frenzy to get to the train bound for london.  the day after my arrival in london i rode the tube to the holborn station, checked out my future living quarters at the london school of economics, and then wandered down to trafalgar square, where i purchased a map and a guidebook.  i was in london for a 6-week study abroad program through umich, and even though i spent most of that summer wallowing in self-pity over my oh-so terrible broken heart, i still met people that ultimately changed my life in one way or the other, and i still took away salient memories of london, the city, to have always.

now i think of the summer of 2000 as the last hurrah, the last hurrah before bush stole the election that fall, before the terrorist fuckers blew up the world trade center and the people inside, before bush's right wing zealot cronies hijacked our government and media and acted out their ugly fantasies on our civil liberties and rule of law and budget surplus.  it was the last hurrah before our military penetrated afghanistan and iraq, before our government alienated the rest of the world community, before cell phones could detonate bombs on commuter trains, before people were going around blowing themselves up in public spaces around the middle east, and before 50 people were senselessly murdered, 700 people burned and cut, along the very transit lines that i rode five years ago, lamenting the departure from my life of an emotionally bankrupt psychological invalid and wondering how much of my parents' money i could get away with spending at harrods.  clinton was president, the dollar held strong, and the u.s. military was not busy valiantly squashing insurgents while simultaneously winning hearts and minds anywhere.

i've sometimes offhandedly referred to that time as the last hurrah, but when i truthfully contemplate that period in the context of everything that was to come in the next five years, it takes on a sinister quality.  not the memories of london so much, nor the meeting of important friends, but the sense that my american peers and i, as well as the people of london that summer were blindly headed towards some blackened future, rather than the bright one that seemed so certain, some hole that was being dug for us beyond our knowledge or control.  because it's not as if the contributing factors to the aforementioned events weren't in the works long before and during the summer of 2000 - people like me were just oblivious to them.  i guess that in a way, i feel guilty.  guilty that i spent the summer of 2000 in a state of gluttony, spoiled and mostly oblivious, when maybe i could have been doing something that might have helped the world i inhabited. 

but also, i feel like people my age got a bum deal.  because as new adults, we've inherited the world as it currently is.  and i feel that in order to fend off the doom that seems inevitable these days, we need to wage so many battles that i have no idea where to begin - the oncoming assault on the supreme court, the vicious discrimination against gay americans, the patriot act, our appalling foreign policy, etc., etc.  people my age five years ago were headed into overpaid jobs in every field.  but then again, a lot of them lost those jobs not long after.  along with the stock options they'd earned and the financial security they'd thought they'd gained.  maybe it's better in some twisted way that now we've got a real fight on our hands.  because while my responsibilities as an adult seem a hell of a lot harder than they might have been, maybe they're nobler than those of  blindly raking in cash to funnel back out into our consumer culture.  maybe the apathy of the 90s, and stupidity of this decade's first half, can transform into some new resolve among people.  maybe?

but right now, i'm sad for the people of london, i'm sad for the people of england, and i'm sad for anyone who has suffered as a result of  these attacks.  my heart goes out to all of you...

Comments

[Gabe]

This is nice.
It reminds me of the writings of Hunter S. Thompson.
I used to be a big fan of his.

Now I don't get to read as much. And, according to my friends, video games, comic books and porn do not count as reading.

I say: WHO WROTE THESE RULES?!?!
My english has not suffered none!!
Forgeddaboudit!!!

Anyway, all joking aside, I liked this post. Very HST.

[brian]

Yeah. I read this before I went to London, but now that I've been there, it makes a lot more sense. Not just the familiar place names and feelings, like meeting people who changed my life, but also the feelings around The Last Hurrah. I'm blogging about some of the same stuff lately, and it was cool to randomly come back here and read this and know I'm not alone.