London:

I just learned that my friend Mike was burned badly in the face yesterday at Edgeware Road Tube station. He will be OK, though, and we're pretty sure that everyone else that I cared about there is safe.

I don't know what to say. London is a place where I was very happy, and I have fond memories. Eating peanut butter, jello, and tuna fish with C-- and E-- in our cozy tiny flat in Gilbert Street, drinking vodka and fruit juice from water bottles on our way to the Three Tuns, T--'s rat-infested barely West End flat with her roughly a hundred roommates, going to see Slovakian modern dance and a fashion show at one of the fine social events we got to go to, spending hours wandering around Spitalfields or Camden market, watching the parade of humanity that goes through London every day, sending country clearances and trying to avoid answering the phone at work, meeting a Countess (though she introduced herself to me as Sophie Limerick and I had no idea what to call her) while visiting a hospital in Cambridge, eating salad in the cafeteria with the other interns, walking home late at night down Oxford Street when it was so empty you could walk down the middle of the street and stopping at Cafe Zeynah for late night falafel, dinner with Ali our insane landlord, and a dozen other totally banal things. And yes, the Tube. I was the Trip Planner, because I had a Tube map in my head almost from day 1 there. I could tell you what lines a stop was on and how far it was from where we were going. My first thought when I heard the news today was: Liverpool Street-- Circle, Central, Metropolitan, Hammersmith and City... You just take the central line straight from Bond street.

London is such a civilised city, a place where you can spend a good afternoon getting a cup of tea and going to the British Museum, or a morning working on a pint at your local. It's a city that I love. I don't like to think of it like this. London can take it, and so can I, but not quite yet.