London Tempest
London for me has always been a place where things turn into something else. Stories of fantastic beasts and monsters from childhood stories enchanted me early on, and perhaps even especially Shakespeare’s plays would fill my head with all the things that can happen to a person in a forest. For some reason, all of these things made me feel like I couldn’t wait to get older. It seemed as though these transformations happen to people when they’re a little older, at least a teenager, and sometimes even older than that.
Today, there are many opportunities to get to London, where hotels offer a sophisticated hospitality to make a trip exceptionally nice. And there are many opportunities to get to see the new version of Midsummer, or any of those plays where things are not what they seem. There’s a lot that’s changed, and a lot that’s still very much the same. The largest difference between then and now is probably a measure of belief. Today, I’m not so convinced that trees can have spirits living inside of them, and I’m not entirely certain that most of the things that creak in the night aren’t just imagination.
It might be that the small degree of doubt, however, that has replaced my faith, is just as strong, if not stronger. On a recent trip, I was going to do a little bit of research, and a little bit of sightseeing. I’ve been carrying around a sense that I had entered into another phase of life. Less magic was entering into my world, and I had been deciding to adjust, and was starting to feel this was working. However, there was a small sense that maybe there was something else, but that sense had been disappointing. But I couldn’t get rid of the nugget. When I was sitting in the theatre, watching the Tempest and thinking about Mirandas of the past, someone brushed my arm, and when I looked, a stranger was smiling and apologizing at once, saying that she thought I was somebody else. Then, we got to talking.