who only by moving can balance

A Geologist's Guide to Finding Ancient History Embedded in Buildings, an article which is discussing London Pavement Geology, via deborah_c!

These are things I would like to go to. For exhibits at the NHM and Kew Gardens I can get people in for free; for exhibits elsewhere it is typically the case that I get in as a concession and get a free carer i.e. we can split the ticket price. I can be very flexible about times; please do let me know if you're interested in any of these (or make counter-offers of things I'm not aware of that you'd be into!).

• Shoes: Pleasure & Pain (V&A): ticketed; what it says on the tin. Until January 31st.
  
• Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture (Tate Modern): ticketed exhibition of kinetic sculpture, for which I am a Maybe if anyone is interested in going with. Until April 3rd.
  
• Otherworlds (NHM): landscape photography of the solar system; 77 composite images from NASA and ESA data. January 22nd-May 15th.
  
• Vanilla and Concrete (Tate Britain): free exhibit of sculpture from emerging artists. Until June 19th.
  
• Misc poking around the Tate Modern, particularly the sculpture galleries.

I can't make it, alas, but on the 23rd of October the GSL are holding a screening of the speech given by the first geologist on the Moon (Apollo 17 mission) upon his return: Through the wonders of 1970s video technology, Schmitt will be beamed live from 1973 to once again present his lecture ["Apollo and the geology of the Moon"] at a special screening in the Upper Library of the Geological Society, Burlington House. 7pm, approx 75 minutes, tickets £12.

In small text in the middle of a banner, approx:

  If you're reading this,
         you're inquisitive. Free thinking.
You're curious about other perspectives,
     determined to develop your own.

Or you thought this was one of those
                 Poems on the Underground.

... for theguardianmembership. They have absolutely met their target audience, and know exactly what they are doing.

First and always: Cambridge. Cambridge, which I've seen through enough different eyes -- town and gown, resident and caretaker, political and utterly independent of any given inhabitants -- Cambridge, which had me for two decades and change, and has me still. My parental home is a 1960s newbuild semi in Arbury; my college contains an archway that predates its foundation in 1350, that's had chunks carved out of the limestone by bicycle pedals over the last hundred-odd years. I've laughed, fondly and otherwise, at the new undergraduates with their shiny new college scarves and no idea how to cycle; I've dodged punt touts and helped my baby brother pass his hiring test to be a punt chauffeur; I've rummaged through the stacks in the University Library and put up and repainted street-signs. I know where the permanent graffiti is and I remember some that's been and gone; I've delivered leaflets at 6am on election morning and I've observed the counting of votes and I've walked across town at four in the morning from the Guildhall (where the outcome was known) to a common room (where people were glued to the news); I've walked across town at two in the morning (Homerton to Trinity Hall) very solemn and slightly wobbly with a viola; I've leaned my forehead against stone and felt where it's come from and been reassured by its solid indifferent presence; I've punted to Grantchester and back and eaten strawberries in the meadows in the sunshine. I've lost and found and found and lost religion and confidence and friends and trust and love. Cambridge is mine, or I am Cambridge's, and so it shall be forever, amen.

Zürich was next. I spent a summer soaking up sunshine, glancing up from my commuter paper to see the Alps crowned with glaciers as we crossed the river, looking out the window on my way to tearing down the stairs from the eighth floor to see the turtles and the fish in the pond way below. There are fields opposite the Spital Limattal -- apple orchards up the hill, but immediately opposite - by the bus stop - pick-your-own flowers and an honesty box. I found cafes and restaurants and friends and I learned a whole new language and I lived by myself absent a support network for the first time, and I explored and I fell in love with museums and was baffled by art and I swam in the lake and learned to like blue cheese on a Roman customs point in the rain overlooking a river with P. I miss pear bread most of all.

I didn't learn how to love LA. Mostly I got as far as baffled affection: for the sky that only ever got as dark as a glowing orange-purple, that turned opaque blanket of smog when you drove high enough into the mountains to see the stars, that left my lungs a wreck for six months; the fantastic street art and terrible public transport; the storm drains and dry river; the jacarandas and the humming birds. My experience of LA is less that, more a haze of heat & food & Caltech campus, with a dream-sequence weekend-long road trip up to the Bay Area somewhere in the middle.

And, of course, London. London, and its river-that-is-a-dragon. I would (as I thought) have hated moving here when I was 18; now I find myself delighting in how joyfully small it makes me, in exactly the same way I am small when I look at the stars or (closer to home) the Moon. I don't belong here but the river-dragon will let me stay a while, and so for now I will fling myself into proms and parks and concerts and gigs and museums and the poetry library; I will stand breathless with delight on the bridge at Embankment or at St Paul's; I will be a mirror for this city and the city shall be a mirror for me, and I will learn more about how people work and more about how I work and I will adore its trees and mysterious statuary and, most of all, I will learn.

(Honourable mentions go to Oxford and to Edinburgh, neither of which I understand, in part because of how intensely my experiences of them are bound up with how I relate to the people I love who relate to these cities; to my patchwork understanding of Heidelberg, all castle and computational linguistics and music and cheap beer by the river; to Rome; and to Paris, and in particular the sunrise walk between Gare de l'Est and Gare du Nord, and a toast to fifth-floor balconies and wine, and croissants by the Seine at dawn.)

What joy, this, to learn what others find in you:
to watch people I love adore anew, to take reciprocal
delight as you illuminate each others' facets
too often hidden from my view by busy-fingered fates
and orbital mechanics. Yes: this too
expands the borders & horizons of
my familiar faithful heart. I'm astounded
by how much I can encompass; by how large
I grow. I learn from you.

Without: the patchwork of the comforting dark,
the sheets of rain, stitched firm
with nets of light we've wrapped round trees
as reminder, to help us find our path.
Bubbles, catching street lamps, float like stars.
Look up. You blaze. You, too, are a landmark.

I really want to go and see Die Zauberfloete (The Magic Flute) at the RCM, in German with English subtitles, at the end of November. Who wants to come with?

I am also quite keen to make it to Silent Partners at the Fitz in Cambridge, which closes end of January. Takers?

Suddenly the smell of rain:
and every cloud alight, and sun
cascading down the brilliant balustrades:
a stunning ordinary moment in a London day.

So many conversations still to have
about honesty and inspiration--
about the turning cog-wheel clockwork of the earth, the universe--
about the merits and otherwise of metaphor--

If you were beloved of all the world
still I would find new ways new reasons (new hope with which)
to love you.