On London

22 February

London unfolds slowly, like a long book.

It is not like New York in anything but its ability to induce anonymity and day dreams.

One can stand across the Hudson River and see New York; can point at Midtown, Uptown, Downtown, the various monuments and blinking wonderments.

From no such point can London's scale and breadth be observed. The river curves and undulates so that it obscures true sense of size, sense of place. There is a mystery to London's ancient streets; no harsh grid, no Avenues, and numbers.

The best cities have the ability to surprise and London can do this. Like a warm, sunny spring day in February, daffodils blooming.

From Greenwich hill, the clear sky revealed the towers to past finance at Canary Wharf, the dome of St. Paul's in the distance, overshadowed by a multitude of construction cranes that seem to hover, waiting.

Straddling the Prime Meridian, one does feel like he is in the centre of the world. This is the place where time and scale are made, the centre of all maps, of all clocks. New York, Tokyo, and Mumbai are far away externalities.

Below, footballers stretch on the park green. Lovers picnic next to an overturned bicycle. And old woman sits and looks over her city. She is not smiling, and what she might be thinking is hidden by her sunglasses and her hat. But like a reptile, she enjoys the sun.

This city was bombed for months and burned to an unrecognizable state. This modern depression will leave some buildings empty and some mansions shuttered, but there is a palpable resilience here.

The Spanish Armada, Napoleon Bonaparte and Hitler were unable to conquer this city, and neither will this economic tsunami that is leaving other cities in shambles, and neighborhoods abandoned.