pale sound of rain against the balcony and strange ethereal/tripped-out sound of techno-ambient-flamingo-colored electronic music playing out of small black speakers. I'm sitting on the fourth floor of a gorgeous squat in London while my British host/newest-best-friend Max responds to e-mail and Sarah lays in bed reading. It's been a long good day, despite the insanity of British rail ticket machines (you want to talk about CRAZY...) and lots of subways. Sarah and I went to the Tate Modern Art museum and slid down these crazy 5-story high twisting slides that are part of an art installation, and looked at the "Poetry and Dreams" section of the art collection, which included most of the surrealist works, and then walked around London seeking food and a place to sit. Ate delicious sweet-potato and cheese cakes at a queer coffeeshop/vegetarian café, then met up with a filmmaker who's working on a feature about a bipolar romance and wanted our input on what it's like to struggle with manic-depressive tendencies and try to have relationships (ha!). This was a trip. We ended up feeling a little like exotic specimens and bipolar testifiers... but she was very receptive and appreiciative, and it seems like the things we had to say will go a long way towards informing her film, which is good for the world, right? (Now Max and Sarah are discussing sexism and fascism in Stranger in A Strange World, which Sarah is reading).

Tomorrow we're hopping on a train to Bradford, where we're giving a talk called Mad in America with the Evolving Minds group. Should be very interesting...

more soon

a tired Icarista

Ashley