(Peekaboo.)

So, friends, it's been a long time. In the, erm, six weeks or so since I last posted, I've taken three trips to London, one last weekend with all of my students, who arrived safely at the end of September. I've been to Bath. I've stayed overnight (with said students, though my strange partly-dug-into-the-cliff room was in a separate building) in a clifftop hostel in Tintagel. I've taught three weeks of my seminar on theatre, which has involved a crash course in all kinds of things I never knew about the history of theatre in general and recent British theatre in particular, ways of understanding theatrical experience, ways of trying to manage vehement student arguments over theatrical productions. During our first group trip to London, we saw a 9/11 show through which one person cried much of the time. This weekend, we go to Stratford, where one of the things we'll see will be Marat/Sade, in a production that (apparently) involves an onstage gang-rape. It's all touchy enough that the Royal Shakespeare Company actually called me today to talk about our seating (in the front row? who knew that wasn't a good idea? not I, to be sure)--though not because of the sodomy but rather because the production design involves ladders that extend over our row and into the circle above, and some recent attendees have complained, for superstitious reasons, about having to sit beneath ladders.

It's already been eventful! (Speaking of eventful, in a much funnier and weirder vein: one evening, I found a slug on the toilet seat in my home bathroom! And yesterday, there was a worm [or similar?] down in the toilet! Clearly my toilet is a Portal to Another World.)

Fortunately, we'll chase Marat/Sade with a heaping helping of Midsummer Night's Dream. As long as this Midsummer isn't something radical and dark, I suspect it will come as a relief to us all.

It's been too easy to let processing my pictures (among many other things in my life) slip, but I've decided to try to get at least an image up here for you each day, even if I can't (for one reason or another, generally because my head just feels full) get something written. A few glimpses of the past week (to follow my capture of Euston Station at sunset during the first group trip to London a couple of weeks ago):

a busy Sunday morning at the Russell Square Underground station

  a mama cow at work, Topsham

what it feels like here sometimes

the tide comes in, Topsham

graffiti, Exeter

Little hiding thing.

The last morning of a multi-day stay on the Cornish coast, I spent about 45 minutes taking pictures at the water's edge. The tide was rattling out, clattering down the rocks and pebbles. Eventually, it was far enough down that I was able to crouch near this bit of brilliance without fear for my camera and lens.

I do fully intend to put in front of you more pictures from those two weeks. But first, another voyage out of town--this time, back to London (where I spent the first half of last week, as well), for a talk by Christo, a tapas lunch, an Italian dinner with someone who has been a blogfriend for a half-decade but whom I've never met, bookstore prowling, art store prowling, a day-long conference, a play, some more lunching of some sort or another, some more museum-going of some sort or another. And through it all, more and more reading of and about plays and theatre: what they are, how it works, what one should ask, what one must know.

And some spells of total stillness, because I'm not allowing for that enough: even my solitude has gotten packed and busy, a reminder of why they tell us, when we go into silence at the monastery, that that doesn't just mean outer silence--the cessation of speaking--but inner silence, as well. I've got a chattery head these days.

Day of birds.

There were godwits on the estuary in the morning, then a heron and an egret I couldn't photograph from a busy bridge, and just before sundown, there were swans, one of which was particularly curious. (The image below is only the first of a slideshow: click its right side to begin!)

The adventures begin.

Please note that the fish and chips joint near the center of this image is "The Tasty Plaice," a name that (minus the key character that makes its pun) could have applied to any number of places we were today: the Nobody Inn, where we ate bubbly cheesy fish pies and desserts that begged to be overeaten; the local cheese shop; my living room, where we ate the fruits of the cheese shop. Devon is for Eating.