Ghosts of Summer Past, Present, and Future

The Ghost of Summer Past: Dancing Queen, Young and Sweet

The Ghost of Summer Past is Meryl Streep dancing with a boa and generally looking really whacky. Last night, I saw Mamma Mia the movie, a week before it will hit the theatres in the U.S. I saw it in the Odeon Theatre on Tottenham Court Road. In London movie theatres, you have assigned seats which is really interesting. You can also get "a bag of sweets." You know in grocery stores when you can scoop one kind of candy into a bag and then they weigh it? The "bag of sweets" is like that, except that you can put as many different kinds of candy in as you want. I got a tiny bit of candy for just one pound, which is pretty good considering that I was dealing with movie theatre prices in the most expensive city in the world.

Anyways, it was such a fun movie! As Sarah Fuhr would say, it was one of those musicals where you just have to embrace the cheesiness. I am a sucker for musicals (as you can probably tell if you've read my previous blogs on Chicago and The Lord of the Rings musical). Even though this one was on the silver screen instead of the West End stage, I still enjoyed it immensely! And it was a lot cheaper than a live musical (though it cost ten pounds, which is like twenty dollars!). I definitely recommend seeing it if you like musicals, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Abba (haha), or just having a good time in general. One of my favorite parts of the movie was during the "Dancing Queen" song when all these middle-aged women were ditching their daily mundane lives and dancing crazily through the street, supposedly like when they were seventeen. It was one of those iconic musical moments where a few people start dancing and singing and pretty soon an uncountable number of people are joining in.

The Ghost of Summer Present: Down and Out in Paris and London

The Ghost of Summer Present is a 21-year-old girl who looks remarkably like me carrying a small overflowing bag down the streets of Paris. Everyone on my program is going to Paris this weekend, but it's going to be really inconvenient as far as our bags go. We get to Paris in the morning but don't check into our hotel until the afternoon and then the next day we check out at 10:00 a.m. and don't leave until the evening. I really didn't want to have to take my large computer backpack, so I just stuffed my purse instead. I have an umbrella, a clean shirt, some necessary toiletries, a camera, my cell phone, mints, Purell, money, my Oyster card (for London Underground transportation), the book I'm currently reading (Tess of the D'Urbervilles, fortunately in a small paperback version) my passport and blue card, maps/notes related to Paris, and my train tickets. All crammed into a medium-sized purse. I'm going to look like a hobo because I'm going to look like I'm carrying all my meager possessions with me and because I won't be wearing any make-up and because I'll be dressed fairly casually compared to Parisians. Plus Matt (my chiropractor) would yell at me if he knew I would be carrying all that weight on one side. But too bad, it's better than being bogged down with too much stuff when you have just a few short hours in one of the greatest cities in the world.

And yes, the book is a necessity! I've been reading on the Tube on my way to and from work, and it's amazing how much I've actually read! I thought I would barely read anything because I'm on one train for about 6 minutes and another for about 9 minutes, and of course you always have to move around to let people on and off the train. And I thought I wouldn't be able to focus in the crammed, hot environment. But actually, my powers of concentration while reading something I want to read are as great as they ever were. I kind of thought college had temporarily taken away my reading superpowers of my youth. But I've still got it! :-)

London is great because a ton of people read on the Tube and walk around reading while changing trains or riding the escalators to/from the trains. No one looks at you funny if you do it, which is great. It takes me back to when I was seven and I walked around the library reading because I was unable to wait until past check-out. I remember running into people and my dad told me, "See, that's why you shouldn't read while walking." I remember thinking to myself, "Nope, that's why I need to practice it more!" And now that practice is paying off!

P.S. My roommate's backpack is less than half full, so I get to put some of my stuff in there. But I'll still post the picture of what I was planning to do in my crazy state.

The Ghost of Summer Future: To Caunterbury They Wende

The Ghost of Summer Future is a train of Chaucer's pilgrims heading to Canterbury (but missing and going to Dover first and then backtracking to Canterbury). Kellie (my roommate), Jessica (one of the other girls on the program) and I are going to Dover and Canterbury a week from tomorrow for a day trip. We're planning to see the castle and white cliffs of Dover in the morning and then spend the rest of the day at Canterbury. We'll also end on a more optimistic note since Dover always reminds me of Matthew Arnold's sea of faith going out, while Canterbury is a nice pilgrimage site. As a sidenote, pilgrimage is a great concept because it is so far from cheesy concepts of easy faith. But anyways, since the subtitle of this section refers to Canterbury, I will close with Arnold's "Dover Beach."

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.