From Laurie- London comments

Originally published  7 March 2012

So Bill has relayed where we have been and what we ate. While he was doing the Imperial War Museum I went to the Tate Modern, the only big museum in London I have never been to since it wasn't there when I was in London last. It is an interesting building and maybe I was just too tired (first time I have ever almost fallen asleep standing up) but wasn't overly impressed with their exhibits. I have seen more innovative art at The Whitney. But it was worth checking out.

Of much more interest was an exhibit of Adonis, a Lebanese born poet/artist who apparently is now in his 80s or passed away. The exhibit was collages, simple but very effective shapes set on top of Arabic script. Because I couldn't read the script my experience viewing this work was probably different than someone's who had the language to give a context to the forms created by the collages. Taking the language out of the experience allowed me to imagine what he might be trying to convey by relating just to the visual aspect of the work.

​ I found myself initially frustrated by not being able to read the script but then entered into viewing the work very differently and becoming drawn into the dialogs set forth between the forms in each piece and their relationship to the visual aspect of the Arabic script background. There was a book of his poetry translated and he spoke of the tragedy of loss and war but states that a lot is lost in translating. So this was a treat to stumble across. And then the fellow I sat next to on the bus to the airport today knew of this man which was kind of fun.

So London is now behind us and now we explore Scotland. We met a very nice man on the plane and I can tell that Scotland is going to be quite different than London. Already the local pub is not a chain and there was not one person wearing a suit in there. Of course we didn't really have time to go to the less uptown areas of London. Got to love the British though, even when they curse and argue they sound so much more civil. Scottish accents are great fun though and poor Bill can't understand most of what they say with his poor hearing.
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So more later. Hope we are not boring everyone, but then again, no one is obligated to read this.

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