Evensong in England

Here I am.  In England.

After a slightly tumultous arrival in the town of Salisbury-- where I quickly had to locate a bike store and then get my bank card working-- I am now smoothly sailing.  Its beautiful.  There's nothing like a brand new bike and an open country road.  Surely if Milton and Shakespear had had the chance to ride a new hybrid bicylcle, they would have waxed about it with the same as enthusiasm as they did roses and blue sky.

Perhaps it is the fact that it is a new bike.  My last few bikes have required some sustained mechanical work on my part.  This is one, I have been able to ride in one shot, after equiping it with my gear.   No fine tuning, no tightening this or that.   It represents the culmination of a month or two of reducing and refining my storage setup and gradually upgrading my equipment.

In Washington I gave my bike away.  In New York I gave my bike away.  And now, I find myself with a yet better bike.  Letting things go seems to be a great way to steadily evolve one's traveling equipment!   Maybe there's a metaphor for life in there somewhere.

My first day in England, wandering around Salisbury, led me to this beautiful, 750 year old Cathedral.  I happened to speak to a lady there, and she invited me to stay for the evening choir service.  Evensong it is called.  

Wow.  A dozen adults and a dozen teenagers, led by surely a professional choir master, enchanted the centuries old space with angelically subtle song.  Listening in the spectacularly acoustic space, seeped with the spiritual, there was a moment when the younger singers held a note for several seconds.  The note resounded with a paradox of purity of tone and yet the layers of different voices all reverberating in sync.  I can't do any better describing it.  

I remember a friend of mine once asked me how to define "Sublime".  There you go Tanya:  Evensong, 7 Pm, Salisbury Cathedral, England.