The first meal that I had had went I arrived at London had been a bacon sandwich from the Costa Coffee next to Euston Station. It was, quite literally, a slice of bacon between two pieces of buttery bread. That was the first time that I had been proverbially pissed on.
I learned from my mistake. This is my second to last day in London, and I am now sitting at a Costa Coffee at Victoria Station. Instead of ordering the bacon sandwich, I went to the Pret upstairs to buy an almond croissant before returning to Costa to buy a coffee. It is not that I enjoy Costa’s coffee more than Pret’s coffee; they both have a sort of airy and warm quality to it that invites memories of joy, but Pret did not have an outdoor seating area. Costa did have an outdoor seating area. It is 61 degrees in London with a bit of its signature overcast, and I am not about to squander such a beautiful opportunity to be outdoors.
I am currently waiting for a train to Sussex. I had forgotten to bring my collection of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, so I am quite bored at the moment. There are four tables that are occupied in this little outdoor area in front of Costa, not including me. Three are occupied by people in business formal. There is the man all the way down that is on his phone. I had asked him a couple minutes prior where I could find a Pret in the train station, and he pointed me towards the right direction. Now, I am back. He must have thought I did not find it. Then there is the table in front of me. One woman was on her laptop, one man was scribbling on a notepad, and another woman was on her white legal pad. The table besides me were speaking in French, not in business formal.
It reminds me of when I had still lived on 16 Albany Street, when I had walked past the Santander London branch every morning for my classes. I had seen many vape clouds on those walks to class. I expect to see more vape clouds over the summer. Although I have not been to midtown Manhattan for about a year now, I assume that the vibe has not changed that much. It is full of the same business professionals in the same business casual. I would have to be one of those individuals in business casual. It’s not a choice in attire that I look forwards to. There is some sense of self-importance that wearing business casual invokes that I have never been able to fully articulate. It is just not a choice of clothing that I would ever pick for myself. I would hate myself if I started vaping.
Although the area where I am sitting is outdoors, it is an outdoors that is created through man’s capturing of the outside. I am covered by a curved metal semi-cylinder with three large striped windows placed in in thirds apart. The circles located at the ends of the cylinder were not present, leaving a gaping hole on either end where the trains would go through. I could feel the sun beating on my forearms through the glass above. I was not wearing the women’s Karrimor ski jacket that I had purchased at the beginning of the semester, which was probably one of the most affordable and efficient purchases of my life. The sun continues to beat.
I had started the semester at a Costa Coffee, and now I am about to end my semester at a Costa. It was a lonely semester, and I am not sure if I have grown from it. I never approached the novelty of a new city with excitement, and it seems that I have not been able to feel that excitement for some time now. It all just seems the same. I arrived here eating a bacon sandwich at a Costa, some time has passed, and now I am once again here at a Costa without a bacon sandwich. It supposes that has some semblance of learning from my mistakes. But the more time I stay here in London, the more it seems that I am just passing by. There are points that I could remember, of course, but everything else just seems to fill the space.
So it goes. So it goes. So it goes!
It all seems so void… experience. It is an accumulation, but it is also absent. I imagine it a bit of taking an integral of f(x) = 0. Regardless of the bounds specified in the integral, it is void of substance, and that is quite similar to how towards the trajectory of my life. Regardless of how much time has passed, I am only living in accordance to f(x) = 0. Sometimes, I could have a discontinuity where I could have a point completely outside the scope of the function, but without a continuous set of points, these points can only exist independently. The integral, regardless of how many discontinuous points I can accumulate, is still void.
shades of gwei 