I am not in a good way.

That’s mostly my fault, I admit. In my interest in minimizing my time in the States I scheduled my trip to arrive the day before the party I was attending, and leave the day after. The scheduling worked great; I arrived in Philadelphia on the train from New York in plenty of time to check in and was up until midnight drinking in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton.¹ The next day I felt fine, hit brunch in the morning,² napped in the afternoon, and had a fine time mingling at the party until the wee hours.³

But the morning found me nearly dead. Sure, there was the hangover.⁴ But I’m blaming that, plus a combination of jetlag, insomnia, oversocializing over the past couple days, and stress about my upcoming flight and the looming US elections. This perfect storm which resulted in me feeling like all the positive neurotransmitters had leaked out my ears during the night, leaving a massively bleak outlook and every joint feeling like it had been smashed by a rubber mallet.

I wanted to cancel all travel plans and just do nothing but stare at the ceiling for a week and order room service. Instead, I packed, checked out, and hit the town. And having dragged myself through six hours of things while feeling exhausted and depressed, I arrived at the airport to discover Icelandair had canceled my flight months ago, and didn’t bother to mention it to me.

I don’t want to bury the lede here. I called my credit card company⁵ and after a nervewracking 40 minutes on hold they were able to arrange a direct flight from Philly to London leaving at the same time. I don’t know if I missed the cancellation email or if it just never got sent, but it worked out just fine.

And the takeaway, as I expected, is that all this practice (navigating ticket counters and booking websites and transportation timetables) means even half-asleep, even at a low ebb of mental and physical prowess, I can scrape enough of myself together to keep on a schedule.

Most people see that as a blessing, but like most things it’s a mixed blessing. It’s good in a crisis, but without the ability to give up, let things go, and just collapse occasionally, you can go through life brittle and tightly-wound. And that’s a recipe for careening from freak out to freak out, no matter how go you are at getting safely through them.

I did manage to fit in a lot of stuff in the short time I had. I grabbed real, decent American pizza in the time between landing at JFK and catching a train to Philly. I also managed to meet a friend for a quick drink. Besides not one but two brunches, I hit a vegan restaurant on Friday night⁶ and a vegan cheesesteak place on Sunday.⁷ And for the time between checking out on Sunday and heading to the airport, I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I wasn’t expecting much — I didn’t know what to expect, really — but it was varied, eclectic, and well-curated. Even in a sick, semi-hallucinatory state, it was nice to wander through all the classical and baroque art and just kind of soak up the atmosphere.

But the real gems, once I had recovered a bit, were in the contemporary and modern art wing. The museum turns out to be the location where Duchamp installed his final artwork Étant donnés (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) and so it was great to be able to see that finally “in the flesh” as it were.

My favorite work, however, was Fifty Days at Iliam, Cy Twombly’s ten part series inspired by the end of the Trojan War. I had never been a huge fan of Cy Twombly, finding it hard to wrap my head around what he was trying to do, but I found those ten canvases deep and powerful. I was thrilled to discover it.

I wish I had had more time, or been less out-of-it. I would have wanted to visit the Rodin Museum, but by the time I finished I barely had time to grab dinner and head to the airport. And so I did.

I started writing this on the plane, still exhausted, still nauseous, still feeling discombobulated. But I fairly quickly fell asleep⁸ and upon landing was able to to make my way to the B&B near Gatwick that I had booked for the night. I’m not feeling fantastic, but I’m significantly better, mostly back on European time with a modicum of the proper neurotransmitters sloshing about, feeling less like I’ve been hit by a truck, and ready to head off to my next destination.

Next: London (LGW) to Kyiv (KBP)
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Footnotes

¹ Largely to try and adjust to local time, although the drinks being paid for didn’t hurt.

² Europe simply doesn’t do brunch the way Americans do. Sure, you can find exceptions, but by and large it’s not the same. Score at least one thing for the United States.

³ Well, midnight, anyway.

⁴ Although not as bad as all that; I had been moderately careful in rehydrating with water and soda during the evening.

⁵ As luck would have it, this was one of the flights I had redeemed credit card reward points for.

⁶ Vedge, which I happened to have a chance to eat at years ago and I’ve been trying to find an excuse to go back ever since.

⁷ Wiz Kid, by the owners of Vedge.

⁸ Big advantage to getting rescheduled is that my transfer through Reykjavik turned into a direct flight to London, so I could just sleep all the way through it.