The excursionism of my British rose

To be modern is to be in a hurry. Modernity is about speed. Machinery. Movement. Magnitude. Mercedes has outran the cheetah, and so have the high heels from Marikina. Notice the fashion ads where models are caught escaping stillness: a sharp-suited metrosexual crosses the street in perfect gazelle-like cadence, looks at the watch wrapped on left while right wraps its fingers around the mobile phone. His pouting lips, although glossy and plum-like, betray a malevolence that is only matched by his Colgate-white fangs. He strides fast and is totally oblivious to the maelstrom behind him – bomb explosions, car collisions, people in flames, traffic lights all green. The impossibly handsome and hasty man couldn’t be bothered. Despite such chaos, the wax holds his quiff tight while a few ably placed strands of hair sway with the toxic wind in tragic harmony.

The modern world may go ablaze but he will not stop for he is a busy man.

London, like any modern city, is ablaze with people in a hurry. No physiological law seems to apply to the stems of the British Rose – short, tall, fat, limping, in stilettos, on drugs – it seems like gravity (or magic) suddenly goes haywire and the Brit feet props up wings or turbo mufflers. No wonder the best runway models are English: Naomi Campbell, Stella Tennant, Kate Moss, Erin O’ Connor, Karen Elson, Audrey Marnay and Jacquetta Wheeler (a perfect name for speed and strength, a ten Wheeler woman). Today’s working class feet aspiring to be future catwalk sirens must first learn to escape the muggers of Hackney, shop in nanoseconds on the no wave markets in Bricklane and Spitlafields, sweep the dance floors of Kashpoint, Trash and the Ghetto, and sashay the mile long platforms of every single train station in the city. The supermodel has to kill the surface she walks on, be it asphalt, ceramic or men. How else can a serial killer such as Jack the Ripper hop from one victim to another, or escape the authorities in no time, if not for his fast and mean pace as well as keen knowledge of surface? In London, space and paces are the same. Take the England-inspired movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. When someone asked "What’s the Harry, Potter?" did he mean speed and space were a Harry thing, a Hogwarths thing, a British thing or a Hollywood thing? Isn’t the proper noun Harry close to the improper verb Hurry? And Potter akin to Pothead, someone who is high on marijuana and afloat in outer space/in the clouds? Harry Pothead also flies off on a broom" the allusion is just too obvious yet (politically) incorrect.

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While waiting for my train to Brighton beach – UK’s favorite summer capital – I begin to sketch a picture of my excursionism (no such word) of Britian. I also decide to skip snapping the predictable sights and instead focus on the pit stops, i.e. the train stations. The beach after all is respite from the madness and movement of modernity, and train stations just serve as some sort of a dress rehearsal-on-wheels.

Each train station I pass offers a similar repetitive break, albeit brief ones, but taken altogether they somehow constitute a month-long vacation for the mind.

Looking at the pictures now I see a similar horizon in a train station, only the seagulls and high tides are replaced by swans and high heels. Together we all patiently wait for our carriage, unmindful of the bumpy ride ahead.

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Too bad that trains from Eurostar to Silverlink don’t provide silver screen for the cinephile-voyager. Inside the cart with headphones on I might meet a Clementine and totally get smitten, like in Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Or befriend an orphan boy from Rio de Janeiro, as if in Walter Salles Jr.’s Central Station. Perhaps have a French quickie on the way to a teacher’s burial, same as in Patrice Chereau’s Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, or trade crimes a la Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers in a Train.

These are all passing thoughts of course, my own movie screen being the empty train station outside my window.

Then a mini Nora Aunor hands me a bottle of water, demands payment, and upon tendering my change, hisses back, "Move out of my way, excursionist. I’m moving too and will be a movie star soon."