Trafalgar Square, London
To have an overwhelming sense of the present moment; to be caught up in the human experience, one only needs to emerge from the Underground and wander into Trafalgar Square on Friday night during the summer. There the iterant observer will find countless thousands of people engaged in all manner of pursuits in the splendid context of immense fountains, classical architecture containing the greatest art in the world, and a few hundred businesses representing a thousand entrepreneurial dreams and cultures. Tonight I waded into this organic seething mass of tempestuous life and was completely caught up into an expansive moment of mindfulness of the highest order. I was thinking about nothing besides my present experience. Suddenly I felt like I had waded into super charged life at its best.
At the northeast side of the square near the impressive St. Martin’s Church, a fellow was doing an elaborate chalk drawing on the paving stones in exchange for odd change. While pre-occupied with his mural, he kept one hopeful eye on his upturned Frisbee ring, trusting for generous benefactors who appreciate street art. Tourists have a curious habit of getting rid of ‘play’ money before getting on airplanes to go home. By tomorrow night many of the people in the square tonight will be dispersed ten thousand miles on jet streams.
Another fellow near St. Martin’s was concerned about the eternal fate of our souls and had a curious array of large flash cards with crude lettering on them. While speaking in a frenzied tenor, he swapped out these cards to create his story lines; standing them up around a milk crate. I wonder if the Holy Spirit actually speaks through such forms of public speaking and delivery. Perhaps the likes of Martin Luther and John Wesley in their days were thought equally strange. Perhaps this fellow thought he had something important to add to what comes from the venerable pulpit at St. Martin’s Church.
A short distance away by the remodeled old entrance to the National Museum a very street-battered unshaven fellow with a full mane of disheveled hair was finding courage from his beer to protest the deployment of British soldiers in the mountains of Afghanistan. He found some material refuge between two crudely made sandwich boards of old cardboard which demanded that Her Majesty’s government do an immediate withdrawal of all British military personnel. Perhaps this tormented soul had been deployed over there in the mountains and returned with a less romantic view of war than the one so often created in films. I wonder if he hears bombs in his head despite all the happy frivolity going on around him here in the square.
Just in front of the hallowed halls of the British National Gallery, a tall lanky Euro-African was playing to his own music in exchange for a few errant coins. I wondered how he managed to drag his large battery powered amps and other bulky paraphernalia out into this ocean of humanity. He did add his own pleasant ambience to this region of the world. I think the guy protesting the presence of soldiers in Afghanistan was actually gaining some fortitude from the upbeat music.
On the northwest corner a couple thousand young idealistic people were herded around a large bully pulpit on which a young girl was expounding on behalf of some sort of child advocacy program. A band was playing and the thousands of people were dancing themselves into some kind of group consensus. I had a sense that a good work was going on here. I found myself wanting to get a web site address to find out what this was all about.
I had the sense that most of the participants in these assorted activities were at least interested in issues larger than themselves; be it child welfare or the welfare of soldiers with PTSD who find refuge in the bottle. It felt almost sacred to wander right into this undulating mass of people and become a pseudo-participant. I was reminded again of why I so often feel like I am missing out on life when I am sequestered in a small South Carolina town. All of these incredible European capitals have such immense concentrations of humanity and activity and I think about them even when I have been isolated for a long time in a place where there is no public gathering of the masses except for a few Thursday evenings in the summer and the Christmas parade. It is energizing and uplifting to be in these grand public spaces where there are these evanescent bits of community.
Around the rim of this vortex of preaching, living, celebration, activism, and loving that was going on, observers, mostly tourists, were taking pictures with small cameras and cell phones. At least one nearby wondered out loud if something violent might happen if the people got worked into a frenzy about something. I wondered how such a thought could occur in this rich happy experience that was going on. Fear is the great spoiler. Curiously, I felt absolutely safe and serene and could have stayed in this place for a very long time. I knew statistically that I was far safer in this dense crowd of people than I am when in relative isolation in my own town. Perspective is everything.
Around the great fountains in the center of the square love birds were oblivious to all but each other. It has always intrigued me how two people can be so intimate in public spaces and completely unaware of anyone else or how their sexual behavior might come across to those engaged in less instinctive activity. I guess love is blind in more ways than one.
As the great British neurologist Oliver Sacks noted, observation does grant an amazing perspective to the human experience. As he entitled one of his articulate books on special aspects of the human experience, tonight I felt like an anthropologist from Mars. I wonder if my powers of observation will yield new findings when I return to my own version of Mars in the American Deep South.
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