You Can Never Get A Cup Of Tea Large Enough Or A Book Long Enough.

Hi! I'm going to be in London visiting family at the end of June for a week and was wondering if you had any cool recommendations (museums, bookstores, etc.) I've already seen all the main parts of London like Buckingham Palace and Big Ben and the London Eye, but I want to see if I can find any cool hidden gems :)

hi, hello, hi -- london is soooo massive there's no end to the things to see... these aren't hidden gems but they're a bit different from central, the west end and all that, a bit more like places where people who live in london go

columbia road flower market

broadway market

brick lane

peckham rye lane

brixton village

borough market

galleries

peer

maureen paley

whitechapel gallery

raven row

south london gallery

across these spots you will find fab cafes, food and bookshops like brick lane books, libreria books, books peckham, bookmongers, round table books and so on.

To write is to cradle myth & memory both & emerge with the fact

of your flesh. I praise the first book that touched me because it was beautiful,

because it was written by a stranger born looking just a little like me & that made him beautiful, & in it

I find every person I’ve loved into godhood tunnelling through the page & beyond the echo

of those precious trees allowing breath: their shadows blurring into a wave, rich & urgent, to greet me.

— Natalie Wee, from “Self-Portrait as Pop Culture Reference,” Beast at Every Threshold

ACHILLES AND THE LONDON BOY:

ArtBreeder Photo Board

Alexander FitzDonald

Theo Fraser

Diana Mayor

Ahem, I may or may not have read far too many novels recently. How do I know this? I have now developed a slight crush on my academic rival in school. Goodness.

When Haruki Murakami said, "Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum - a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no one but myself." And when Audrey Hepburn said, "Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once."

An Ode to Rays of Sun

Sweet, mellifluous rays of sunlight

seep through every crack, every seam

invading every crevice, every nook

until there is no space for night.

A million threads,

golden as fresh honey,

bright as a thousand suns,

tether me to the sky.

The shine of silk or velvet,

the beauty of a field of dandelions,

the yellow light,

sends a haze over everything,

obscuring all that is not good.

The morning is acissmus,

the night, a palimpsest.

Until you see the stars.

Oh, the stars deserve their own poem.

I cannot do them justice as a simple end to another.

How can one call themselves human without being enamored with the heavens?

An Ode to Pools of Moonlight

Shimmering lace

Falls to the floor,

Like a spool of silk

Unraveling,

Revealing a dimension

Not thought of,

Not seen.

The stars melt into your waterfall

That ebbs and flows

In turn

With the tide.

A million darlings wish on your missiles,

Your projectiles of light,

Falling through the sky.

Your same image

Reflects upon the Earth,

Ever shining,

Above us all

Like a silver thread

Connecting humanity.

An Ode to Rays of Sun

Sweet, mellifluous rays of sunlight

seep through every crack, every seam

invading every crevice, every nook

until there is no space for night.

A million threads,

golden as fresh honey,

bright as a thousand suns,

tether me to the sky.

The shine of silk or velvet,

the beauty of a field of dandelions,

the yellow light,

sends a haze over everything,

obscuring all that is not good.

The morning is acissmus,

the night, a palimpsest.

Until you see the stars.

Oh, the stars deserve their own poem.

I cannot do them justice as a simple end to another.

How can one call themselves human without being enamored with the heavens?

Linguistics, my beloved.

Interviewer: What difference in usage would you point out in these three languages [Russian, English, French], these three instruments?

Nabokov: Naunces. If you take framboise in French, for example, it’s a scarlet color, a very red color. In English, the word raspberry is rather dull, with perhaps a little brown or violet. A rather cold color. In Russian it’s a burst of light, malinovoe; the word has associations of brilliance, of gaiety, of ringing bells. How can you translate that?

- Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor. Bryan Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Eds.

You ever see a pretty dress, a well-organised notebook, a peculiar balcony or read one line of poetry and get the overwhelming urge to reinvent yourself