2009-02-03 - 11:39 a.m.

Upon returning from an overseas trip, thoughts in the second person, sometimes in the present tense:

1. So your friends, the London experts, after a beer, they're leading you this way and that, through labyrinthine and narrow streets, and pointing out where certain writers lived, or drank. Then you round a corner, are in a giant museum, through an entrance, see a big crowd around a glassed case, wonder what they're up to, work your way near the case, and then you're looking at a big jagged hunk of almost-black rock. And there is tons of very small and very straight writing on it. And you think, I wonder if this is something like the Rosetta stone, that maybe has three languages saying the same thing, and then you look at the plaque and you are, in fact, not looking at something like the Rosetta Stone but the Rosetta Stone itself, a thing you first read about in the eighth grade and which, for all of your life, was so far away and so old and half-real that it may as well have been the moon.

2. The joy and genuine admiration or maybe relief, inescapable and everywhere you went, that people in England and Norway have for Barack Obama. People you'd just ten seconds ago met were actually smiling at you when they mentioned the inauguration. And the near-universal dislike and maybe just tiredness felt for George Bush. It's hard to describe without it sounding like a cliche', but it was striking. I'll never forget, I hope, the sight of Norwegians clapping and shouting as the new president was sworn in. Obama was everywhere, on the cover of every newspaper, on TV, on advertisements for restaurants. I tried to imagine a similar thing happening here, and I can't.

3. Viking ships in Oslo, the gunwales just a few feet above the water. An all-wood Stave church in the Oslo folk museum, the wood still so deeply and richly brown it's hard to believe it was built in the 12th century. People cross-country skiing, as a form of transit, in a major European city. The almost outpost feel to Trondheim, halfway up the Norwegian coast, how it's a decent-sized city, and a pretty one, but with the feeling that the hard rocks, the deep snow, the wolves, are all somehow just outside the gates.

4. I know now that wellies aren't just one of the English things you hear about but an actual thing with an actual purpose. Rural England is muddy, at least the parts that aren't paved over. It's a deep-brown earth there, and I can see why gardening is such a big deal. Our friends had their narrow boat docked along a canal way far out in the countryside and, out there, all is muddy. They had swans outside their windows in the morning. They burn coal in their little onboard stove. I got called "mate" a lot. England is expensive but not as expensive as Norway. I like the English facility with wordplay, a lot. Port is sweet as fuck and I didn't know that before but now I do.

5. It's nice to get outside of yourself, if only for a few days. Being away from home, you get a sharper sense of what you're not, what you are, how you're seen, who you are exactly. I remember in Ireland, in Kilkenny, the guy from Manchester, he said I looked like a "well-fed American." He didn't mean a fat American, but instead a healthy one. In Athens, you could tell from five or six groups of people away, which ones were the Americans. They were the loudest. Norwegians speak softly and don't speak to you unless spoken to or generally make eye contact very much. The English, it's true, are polite, especially with the spoken stuff: the pleases and thank yous and the hello-goodbye add-ons. So, in Norway, I felt a little boorish, as if I were elbowing my way through train cars, as I were always the New Yorker on a cell phone. But I also felt lucky to be able to see Viking ships, to see the plain yellow monolith where the king of Norway lives and the way that every available surface in central London is adorned with something, all of it saying, We Are Strong and Rich, and you must admit, it's a sight that goes right to that thick cord that runs from your neck all the way down to your warm parts.

In completely other news, the University of Illinois theater department recorded a reading (not done by me) of one of my essays. It's called "A Cheat Sheet Memoir," and it's in the middle thing:

http://www.ninthletter.com/

Also, I think one of my students this semester is named "Email."

It's that time, at the office, at millions of offices up and down the east coast, five hours from London and six from Oslo, and I'm going home now.

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