My favourite excursion this week was The Westminster Abby day trip. The class and I left our home at Regent's College and travelled south down the Jubilee line to Westminster Station. It took a little less than half an hour, with moderate crowds. As soon as we exited the station, Big Ben was looming across the street; rising majestically towards a menacing sky. After a short walk across the street and toward the right, one of our learned professors pointed out such interesting facts like how Oliver Cromwell faces his opponent King Charles the First in an epic, continual defiance. Simply gawking at the outer structure of the Abby takes ones breath away. The tall spires winding upward, and the eye-popping attention to detail prelude what is to come upon entrance. Once inside, we were given exclusive rights to view the shrine of Edward the Confessor, along with a lecture (which did not feel like a lecture at all) by the very first American to ever hold keys to the Westminster Abby himself. How can one really describe the amount of beauty, or extravagance or detail when such things are said to be in the eye of the beholder? The exquisite colours, now faded by time, gave the impression of power and significance. The candle light solemnly dancing off the dull stone walkways shed an overbearing light on the countless stone graves lining the walls, and the floor. The tombs of specialty or royalty were bejewelled with minute detail, and worn majesty. And the ceiling, rising with all its regal splendour seemed to be crafted by God himself. The arches and pillars hundreds of feet high, with stunning stained glass windows, radiating blues, greens, maroons, yellows, and browns over the dark grey floors. The countless Kings, Queens, poets, and writers buried and memorialized under the stone gives the Abby a hushed reverence. Touching the graves and headstones in the walls brings to mind the mortality of one's own life. The accomplishments these historic individuals include everything from full out war, to years of peace, and my own meagre deeds pale in comparison. By far my personal favourite place in the Abby was called Poet's Corner, after the many authors, musicians and of course poets buried and memorialized there. This is where is where my breath was taken from me in touching Chaucer, Handel, Kipling, Swift, and Tennyson's graves; along with the Brontë sisters, and above all Jane Austen's memorial. Back home in the states I never dreamed beyond wondering what some of my beloved authors were like in real life, and yet here I was standing over their graves, weeping for what felt like the loss of my childhood fancy that death is painless. That day I found out that although death might be painless for the deceased, the living are in distress of what was lost. My heart soared higher than a plane while my stomach felt somewhere in the vicinity of my feet for these dead idols, their work still sought after even lifetimes later. I left the Abby then after the crick in my neck started to bother me, reminding me that while young, I am still human; even if being in the Abby gave me subhuman feelings. The first thing my eye caught onto leaving the gates of the Abby, were two enormous buildings, one white and adorned, while the other along side it was black and dark. I was immediately brought to wondering that while the past and future and can cooperate with each other, there is a specific line (or colour, if you will) between my own past and my present. All I can do as a person is find my own balance, and walk that line.