London

After I had been writing Turning It Around for awhile, I began to
realize that it was misleading because I was focusing on my
abortion as if it and only it had led to recent bad times.

The fact is that the abortion never led to the extreme poverty that
I experienced when I had my son. Nor after my abortion was I
told never to return to Wisconsin.

It is my London experience that I turned into Go, so that I could
tell the story not event by event, but in terms of the motivations,
emotions, struggles, and everything I knew about life.

This is me, Karen Kline, in the Sixties, idealistic Cultural
Committee Chairman for the University Center Board when I
was in University. I was voted Chairman of the year, primarily
because of my great knack for getting people to work together.
For instance I had really great meeting attendance because I'd
asked some of the most talented senior guys to be on my
committee, and a lot of the cute freshman girls.

Sometime in the Seventies, before I got pregnant, I was helping
Richard Morse, hydrologist for the highway department, make a
Ferro Cement boat in the desert near where the Santa Fe Race
Track is today.

I did the oxy/aceteline welding. (I wanted to be a silversmith, so it
was a little off the mark.)

I was eight months pregnant when my friend Marcia took this
picture of me while we were shopping for fruit.

I stayed with Marcia in Oshkosh, Wisconsin while I waited for
my passport so I could move to London.

My glasses were the kind that get darker in bright light. When
Miguel was a baby he "posted" them into the dust bin, which I
emptied before I realized my glasses were gone.

Miguel and I on the Sudeley Street roof patio. Miguel is sitting on
the wall of John's row home. You can see a series of walls behind
him. Each row home is one room wide, plus the width of the
entrance hall.

John had our roof changed from the typical two sloping surfaces
to one flat surface where we could have plants and sit out. I loved
the London chimneys when I first arrived, and love them still.

This is Miguel with John Hudson, the English topologist I met in
Monterey, California while he was here thinking for our country.
John was great with Miguel.

John was so excited about me coming to England to him, to have
Miguel. John was my first love and I wish I had not cried so
much after I had Miguel and my mother told me never to return
to Wisconsin. John suffered from depression, and had been
attracted to me because of my sunny disposition. My constant
crying was hard on him and we broke up.

Miguel made this armour and just loved it. The black at the front
is his shield, it would have been the shiny pink, too, but the
reflection made it appear black.

When John and I were breaking up, and I found that John had
thrown the armour away, I was so sad because I knew then that
John didn't care about Miguel's feelings. Or so it seemed.

Miguel rode his tricycle all over London. I had a rope tied to it
and pulled him along relatively quickly after we got off the red
London bus.

This picture was taken by John at the warf when we were visiting
the Lighthouse Ship.

In the West End, like on Oxford Street, it was very crowded so
that no picture taken there would have shown the tricycle so
clearly.

When we walked along Regent's Canal at the bottom of our
street, we didn't use the rope.

The arch at the top left of the photo is Danbury Street Bridge.
Beyond it is the lock for this section of the canal.

I knit Miguel's sweater. It's a yin yang design that I chose, for
which John wrote the pattern. John really seemed to be able to do
anything.

There were so many good times that it's hard to believe how
much I cried from the time my mother said never to return to
Wisconsin.

Just before John and I broke up, Miguel and I went to Cornwall
with Susan and Barney Buik, who lived across Sudeley Street
from us.

We stayed in Diamond Cottage in Polruan, and took the ferry
across the estuary to Fowey each day. It was a picturesque area.
Fowey Church is in the background behind Miguel.

It is very hilly and there are stairs all over the village. The custom
is that you mustn't pass on the steps or you will never marry.
You must wait at the landings for the other person so proceed. I
was very careful, but I've still never married.

Miguel loved the Fowey beaches and playing in the boats that
lined them.

We went back to London on April 1st. I found John getting
ready for a date with Laura who lived next door to Myrth, his
sister. April Fool's Day.

It was so painful, I didn't think anything could be that painful.

I threw an i ching, asking about Laura, thinking it would tell me
she was a home wrecker, a terrible person. But it gave me the
hexagram for marriage. It also said that I should not leave.
Perhaps it was a fork in the road and I should not have gone
across the street to Susan's. Perhaps if I had not left, John
would have chosen to stay with Miguel and me.

Miguel and I lived with Susan and Barney Buik for a while.
Miguel woke up every day saying, "I go see John." It made me
so desperately sad. I tried to explain to Miguel how sad it made
me because John wasn't in our lives any more. So the next day
Miguel woke up, sat up in bed, and said, "I no say I go see
John." Heart wrenching.

Then I found a flat at 277 Goswell Road, just a couple blocks
away but in an industrial area. London Industrial Diamonds and
a florist were downstairs. The upstairs was vacant.

The daffodils are outside our living room window on a shallow
balcony.

Our flat extended over three ground level buildings, so it was a
lovely large room.

Miguel and I lived on the corner of Goswell Road and Friend
Street. This is the side view of where we lived. The street sign
says, "Friend Street."

The three windows above the balcony are to our flat. They
were floor to ceiling windows in the Georgian style. I hung beige
army blankets from my friend Virginia for drapes.

At first I painted the whole place black and brown: Otter and
Tobacco. The walls were Tobacco, and the woodwork was
Otter. The colors reflected how I felt.

In a year or so I wallpapered with Shinto paper from Habitat,
basically it was beige with a green design on it.

My workbench was under an old, tin light fixture on an ancient,
weighted pully. The matted art on the Shinto wallpaper is by
Miguel. You can see the blanket drapes.

When I wanted the workbench, after I had seen it in Hatton
Garden, I just wanted it so much. I thought and thought about
it. It's very beautiful, in addition to being useful.

While I was wanting it so much, I got a phone call one day for
the very shop at which the work bench was. The shop's number
was not at all like mine, so I think the call must have been in
response to my strong thoughts sent into the universe.

Actually, I seldom had a phone during those days. When
someone broke in, there was no way to call for help, so I
grabbed my bracelet mandral and ran at him, scaring him away.

The shelves above my typing desk were put up by John Barry,
managing editor of the Sunday Times. I don't know why I didn't
include in the photo the IBM Selectric John arranged with the
Sunday Times for me to use to type Slater-Walker by Charles
Raw.

By hiring me to type the book, John provided for Miguel's needs
that required money. He paid me "under the table" because I
hadn't been successful getting the Home Office to allow me to
work.

I used to buy nearly as much CorrectoType as I did paper.

When the book was finally published, I had a nightmare in
which the reviews said what a good book it was except for the
massive typographical errors.

Our loo on Goswell Road was upstairs and just beyond this little
room with ladder. The watercloset ceiling had a hole through
which you could see the sky. Miguel did not like the facilities at
all, as you can see from his expression.

About a year after this picture was taken a huge fern or fungus
began growing on the wall above the hand basin in the
watercloset. I wish I had photographed it. It was amazing.

J. Blundell was my favorite place to buy silver and gold to use in
my smithing. It was by Oxford Street, rather than in Hatton
Garden, as I remember it.

It was amazing to me, once I needed some gold for bangles or
something and they didn't have quite what I needed so they said
they'd send it to me. Sure enough this package of gold that I had
not paid for arrived, and I was billed. It was totally amazing.

Another time the amount of gold I needed was as much as all
my money, and I must have blanched because the young fellow
waiting on me said I'd better have some of his chocolate.