Moments captured at their most beautiful.

I want to live here.

Bottom line.

Of course, when I visited Manhattan, I wanted to live there, too. And I understand that it's really difficult and that, of course, I'm romanticizing it. And there's an obvious downside, which is that I don't think I could logistically live here anyway, but I made a wish in the fountain at Trafalgar Square tonight.

I want to write stories. And TV. And films. And I want to live here.

(I feel like I'm copycatting Miss Gibson, who did it and continues to do it ... and who encourages me to take risks and do what I think will most please me. But, seriously, I was almost in tears walking from the Tate Modern tonight, not just because my leg was cramping.)

The Tate Modern, which is this absolutely AMAZING museum in which both the space and the art within it are thrilling, received my first visit yesterday. And I went back today after Miss Gibson and I took a ride on the London Eye and enjoyed the sights, for Miss Gibson had to work, and I had my last night to myself. To do whatever.

And the Tate is where I went. Because it's my favorite place here. My absolute favorite.

I went to the members' room observation deck first and took pictures of St. Paul's Cathedral, which is right across the river.

(Yesterday, Miss Gibson and I walked across the Millennium Bridge toward it at sunset, talking and talking about destiny, fate and love. It was beautiful looking at the sunset on the Thames. Walking with Miss Gibson, I asked her if they'd ever done a movie celebrating London the way Woody Allen celebrated New York with "Manhattan." A movie that has a plot but functions, as well, like a beautiful living postcard. She couldn't think of one. Everything Miss Gibson and I walked through these past weeks, I felt like I was walking through a postcard. A moment captured at its most beautiful. Occasionally, struck by the beauty in a moment, I stopped Miss Gibson and kissed her on the cheek. On the London Eye. At St. Paul's. She thinks it's sorta funny and sorta nice, I think.)

There's this room featuring the works of Mark Rothko where I just sat and stared at the paintings for hours. And there's a Jackson Pollock work that's just amazing.

In front of Monet's "Waterlilies" today, a boy with his family was making fun of the art. He was about 10. And he didn't get it. He thought it was boring and dumb. And I was sitting there in front of it, studying it, and I looked at his parents and asked him a question.

"Do you not get what it's about?" I asked.

"I kinda get that one," he said, pointing out the Monet. "But I honestly don't get these others."

"Do you want me to explain it to you?" I asked him.

"Sure," he said.

And he walked over to an abstract that was supposed to represent a field of flowers, and I started to explain it to him - and, interestingly, his whole family. I told him how impressionism was supposed to work. How the artist looked at something for a moment, saw it as its form, but also saw it as color and light. I told this boy that the artist looked at the field of flowers and saw lines and shapes and colors. Which the scene had in it but the painting had abstracted. And that's what he painted it as.

His uncle piped up, "The stems of the flowers are the lines?"

"Yeah," I said.

The uncle mumbled something, so I turned my attention back to the boy.

"Have you ever drawn a person and realized that his face was really just made up of all these shapes?" I asked.

"Yeah," the boy said.

"Even though he's still a person, he's also just these shapes and colors," I said. "And, in a different light, his face shines in a different way. Or it makes a weird shadow."

"Yeah," the boy continued.

"So these artists decided to paint what weird things they saw in shapes and light and life when they looked at something," I said. "Rather than painting exactly what it looked like."

We went back to "Waterlilies" after that, and I showed him how the texture of the paint looked from the side of the canvas. I showed him how, if you looked at the whole thing, you could see what might be a lake. Or it might be just shapes and lines and colors piled on top of one another.

"Is this interesting, or is it still boring?" I asked him.

"It's still boring," the boy said.

I sighed.

"Oh well, I tried," I said to him.

Then I said goodbye to the family, who I think thought I was both smart and a little crazy.

There's a giant mobile in a dark, dark room of the Tate that has a lightbulb in the middle of it.

Though it's made of trash that was found in a shed somewhere, the sculpture itself is fascinating. By including the light in it, the shadows and shapes dance along the walls. And the shadows become as much a part of the work and the experience as the sculpture itself. And your shadow mixed in with all the shadows the work cast. I LOVED it.

I went to the information desk at the Tate and asked them what it took to work there. Just so that, for a moment, I could entertain the idea. They accept volunteers there, and you can also work your way through the ranks, doing odd jobs. It sounded like fun, actually. I can see working in the shop there, where they sell art books and the video player shows Fritz Lang's "M," of all things, over and over.

I got the bus to Waterloo Station afterward, once I'd finally gotten around to doing some shopping. (Sorry, gang, but I don't really DO souvenir shopping. I got over my Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt collection after they opened one in friggin' Atlanta. And I have to mail the postcards tomorrow because I COMPLETELY forgot. You're getting Tate Modern postcards, except for Marley - who wanted a site postcard ... and something random and free. I got her a map of the Tube, which is in one of my pockets somewhere.)

After that, I got to Trafalgar Square, which I had sorta kinda seen before but not really, and I made my wish in one of the fountains.

Then I went to this bookstore called Waterstone's, I think, and I picked up two paperbacks, which have different covers here anyway. There was a cute clerk named Colin there, who had picked a book that I was holding as a Staff Recommendation, and we chatted about it. (I wonder how often people browsing think of me as "a cute bookstore clerk" and chat me up. It happens more than I probably realize.) He told me he'd rather be eating and drinking a pint somewhere, rather than working a Saturday night shift. I asked him how long he'd worked there and how he'd ended up there, and he told me that was a long story best told over a meal sometime. And I told him I was leaving tomorrow.

It's been like that sometimes. People have been really nice to me here.

Miss Gibson's been incredibly kind and generous. And she's walked slow when I've needed to walk slow. She's been quiet when I've been quiet. And she's been a sport when I needed one. (Her birthday's next month. Maybe I should buy her that Chagall I saw on sale at the Dali exhibit.)

But her friends are great, too. They've been friendly and gracious.

And the people are what's making it so hard to go. Added to how the city makes me feel. How the neighborhoods look. How the cars go in a direction foreign to me, but I've learned how to cross a street. How I like the tube station and didn't fall in between the gaps and die a horrible death. How the ads on the streets and in the stations are all for books and movies. How there's more I haven't seen. How the rest of Europe is an hour away.

(Incidentally, I didn't write about the Fleet Street adventure yet, where Miss Gibson and I went to a centuries-old pub and found a historic dictionary and a famous dead parrot. And I didn't write more about how great Niamh is. Or about the waitress at the Mexican restaurant whom I flirted with incessantly, asking her if I could make her famous. Or about how I straightened Niamh's boyfriend's collar, even though I'd not really spoken to him before, and I'm sure he immediately figured I was gay. Or about the late-night gypsy minicab ride to Zone Three. Or about how I'm sure politician-professor CK Dexter, who let me sleep on his living room floor and told me to come back to the city when he hugged me and said goodbye, will become Prime Minister one day.)

It rained tonight. The water beaded on the glasses I've been wearing, the ones that Miss Gibson told me make me look like the rest of trendy Shoreditch.

I can't write more. I'm out of time. I've got to pack.