O what a glorious day. It's her birthday, the one I love, and all I can hear is the bells, the bells, the ringing of the bells. I can still hear them in the back of my mind, those chimes of afternoon cheer, ringing 'round the square that fronts the abbey in the heart of London. Big Ben had struck the gong at noon an hour before, and we knew we had arrived at the perfect time in a place so magical that it proceeded to follow us through the rest of the happy city. Marblesque statues of deceased legends adorned the halls of that Gothic interior, where plaques written in dedication honored all the noteworthy people of English history. It's not simply a tomb, no, the presentation makes it seem like you're wandering through a museum, which has somehow managed to enrapture itself with the high stained-glass windows, flying buttresses, colorful diptychs, and illustrated altars of a grand cathedral, for in spite of all its tombs this is the beating pulse of the entire country, of anything that could be remotely described as English. It was in the nave of writers that I felt especially privileged, as the bones of Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Auden, and Eliot all spoke to me at once, sending me into a trance that hypnotized the poet in me and channeled it through such a grateful revelry. Thank you, Masters of the Past, for showing us mortals how it is possible to reach divine status, even to those of us who try over and over again and still fail. You are the reason we keep on, for if there's any quality that links us all together, it's that we never gave up our talents to alcohol, debauchery, or meaningless pleasures that numb the senses. Here we are united in our common interest, living and dead alike, to record the experiences of man as best we can. My only wish is that we had something like this in America, where all our greatest poets and historical figures could be honored in a single location; a national mausoleum so aesthetically pleasing that anything less would be unworthy of the remains of such influential people.
The rest of her birthday was blessed by such incidents as running into a surprise parade in which the greatest of British athletes were awarded for their achievements at the Olympics in Rio; and the verdant nook of St. James Park, where we fed ducks and had lunch on the shores of a royal lake; and finally, that boisterous troop of children on a field trip, tromping single file toward Buckingham Palace, which she wanted to follow, and so we did, yes, all the way through the park, enjoying all the surprises that any mob of children are capable of providing, and when we got there she laughed, yes, she laughed at the way they all climbed up onto the gates of the palace begging to see the Queen. I hope she enjoyed her birthday, I really do, and if she can still hear the bells like I can, then she surely did. It didn't pan out the way it was supposed to in my head, but perhaps it was meant to be that way; a day of surprises without being planned, the way the best days in life will often disappoint us at first, yet retain their glory and grow on us for so long that they begin to shine over all the others in the museums of our memory.
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