I go out there.
I write about what I find.

As of this very warm afternoon, Grace and I have been in Britain for three weeks. Three weeks in most anywhere is certainly enough time to see the major sites — but preoccupied with other duties, and finding that the train into the city from our current accommodation is both one hour away and US$10 (one way!), we have often hesitated…

Until today. Because this evening, we have mustered the cash, risen from the London Underground, and emptied our schedules. Well, at least I have: my wife’s schedule, to her great pleasure (for reasons you may soon understand), has not: a friend from New Zealand lives in London — as does seemingly half the population of that very remote country — and they are to spend a few hours catching up.

As we go our separate ways now, I leave the familiar and enter into the unknown: if you had asked me this morning, “Have you been to London?”, I would’ve said, “yes.” But confronted with a reality of raw concrete that I cannot twist any which way, I am forced to acknowledge that I have never truly been to London.

Because on a bus, or in a train, or bound by a tight schedule, you are secluded: often physically, other times by excuses, but nevertheless, you are partitioned. And in being so, you inevitably lose the greatest lost art I have just uncovered: walking.

I tell you, Americans and New Zealanders both have it wrong: cars, buses, or trains certainly can travel more distance than a British man on foot, but they can only take you so far; and once the future is faced by a man on only his feet, the world in all of its extravagance finally returns to human proportions.

There is a level of concentration in my eyes that no Adderall prescription can replicate as I stand face to face with the timetable at a bus stop on Queen Victoria Street as three red double deckers, all with an assortment of numbers and destinations, turn the corner to my right; and for a small moment, here as a human, I take a stand for once in my life and reject the algorithmically determined ‘best’ way to proceed that Google Maps suggests — whether it costs me another 12 minute wait or not.

And 12 minutes, in the scheme of this evening, is peanuts. I am en route to a place my brother-in-law-in-law (my sister-in-law’s husband?) Caleb suggested I visit: the ancient Roman ruins sitting inside central London.

It takes longer than I’d prefer but not very long at all for me to emerge from an alleyway which presents me with differing realities: dead ahead sit four lanes of traffic, quieter than normal at this time of day; just beyond sits the ruins of The Tower of St Elsyng Spital — the remnants of William Eslyng’s 1330s hospital and church which provided care for homeless blind individuals for over 200 years, until 1536.

And no contrast sits greater than that which is 25 feet to the left of that tower: Barbie Green, an ‘Australian-style cafe’ (whatever that means) which is surrounded entirely not by the aura of charitable Sainthood but by young men and women who have wandered over from the nearby Banking District, clad in button downs and pantsuits, unwinding with drinks — undoubtedly Australian in nature — after working a job with a title no human can decipher.

Then, down the road, sits a feat of engineering I have only seen in movies: a skyscraper hovering over top a four way intersection. Underneath, the orange glow of street lights gives way to ample opportunities to chart my own path as this evening commences. But that will have to wait, because I have just discovered that I am standing in front of a place with a plaque which reads: Site Of Cripplegate.

In 120AD — ninety or so years after Jesus — the Romans built a fort near the north-west edge of Londinium — then, the largest city in this nearly conquered province, and its capital.

This fort though, was unlike those in more treacherous regions of the Empire: archaeologists note this place would have had little defensive value. Instead, it was built to house the governor’s ceremonial guard, two hundred military administrators who organized the supply chains which stretched across Britannia, and about thirty men called Speculatores — whose job was threefold: maintaining custody of prisoners, executing prisoners, and carrying the mail.

But in the autumn of 196, the governor of Britain, a man named Albinus, declared himself Emperor of Rome entirely, rounded up most of the military might in his province, and set sail for Gaul — continental Europe — to take the throne. As with the occasional grand plan, this one was short lived: in February 197, he was defeated at Lugdunum, and his opponent — Septimius Severus, who was also vying for the throne — rode his horse over Albinus’ naked body.

Britannia, now without the Roman military men who once defended her, became an increasingly soft target: the tribes north of Hadrian’s Wall, which was effectively the northern border of Rome in Britain, inevitably ventured south in raiding parties.

Amongst a few targeted offensive efforts sat one gigantic venture: 85,000 tons of ragstone, quarried in the distant Medway Valley and then transported via merchant barges on the River Thames, soon converted what was once a small fort on the edge of the city into a major defensive position, and changed what was once a back door for soldiers into a massive city gate.

Well over a thousand years later, in the 1480s, the will of a former Lord Mayor of London, Sir Edmund Shaw, requested that a set aside allowance be used to rebuild this gate: what returned in 1491 was the main northern gate to the City of London: Cripplegate. This would form a crucial part of the famous London Wall itself.

Named so, why? Well, either because the body of St Edmund, who was martyred by the Danes in 869 for refusing to renounce Christ, was carried through the gate in 1010 to be kept safe from raiders by resting in London, and every lame beggar gathered there was suddenly able to walk. Or because crypel is the Anglo-Saxon word for a covered way.

I won't tell you what to believe, of course.

The gate at the early fort of Londinium held more than guards and executioner-mailmen: it held the promise of Rome for the world, and here, as elegant as they come, specifically for Britannia: a better, more civilized, more productive, and more comfortable future. 

Rome only asked for one thing in return. And while Rome had the option of force, more often than not, the conquered did not comply so much as bask in pleasure, in short order — on their own accord. Tacitus, a Roman historian and senator whose father-in-law was Agricola, the man in charge of conquering Britain, wrote:

"His [Agricola’s] object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. [...] The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. [...] And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as ‘civilization’, when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement."

That same Tacitus who noted the above documented a wildly famous speech attributed to Calgacus, a Caledonian chieftain who was chosen to lead the charge against the Romans in 83 AD. There stood 30,000 men, of all different tribes and clans and regions, now of one mind, organized in a collective defense against those who, in pursuit of infinite expansion and dominion and conquest, had come to claim the edge of the world. Calgacus’ most famous sentence is undoubtedly this gem:

“To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.”

How beautiful a notion — and how convicting a word. Unfortunately though, Calgacus and his men lost to Rome, and all the tribes scattered. Even worse though, is that that sentence — and, actually Calgacus’ entire speech, which was a deeply moving indictment against Rome and is still a great read — was entirely manufactured by Tacitus: thus one of the most famous verbal rebellions against the Roman way was from none other than a Roman politician, voiced through the mouth of a man who never had the chance to object.

By 360 AD, central Rome was under pressure. The empire began to withdraw troops, and 50 years later Roman legions were entirely gone. Britain was, at most, a distant, remote province not worth stretching for.

What remained was the expertly built city of Londinium, fortifications and all. But instead of moving in, Britons settled a mile upstream and left Londinium for the moss. Scholars’ best guesses circle around, genuinely, that the Britons thought it was haunted. A pre-10th century poem titled The Ruin puts it, 

"wondrous is this wall-stone, broken by fate; the city buildings crumble, the work of giants decays."

Conquered by Rome, and given every amenity the Empire could offer; it would be 400 years before anyone built anything inside what was once Londinium. 

And frankly, spend 15 minutes in front of the Australian-styled Barbie Green cafe built on the 1940s-bombed ruins of a church hospital for the blind homeless and tell me you feel anything other than haunted.

It was only a few moments ago, in the second story of a library which Grace and I came to only for WiFi, did I find a book on the shelf in a back corner: Barnabas Calder’s Raw Concrete: The Beauty of Brutalism. Only by chance, with this dispatch on my mind, did I even pick it up. And then, only by fate, did I flip it to Chapter Three, page 85, and find a section on what is called The Barbican.

Because if you walk into the center of London today, you will find few remnants of the Roman Empire that not only once ruled here, but first built this city. On the odd occasion you do, such as if you venture quite intentionally across four lanes of traffic, and walk through the crowd of bankers, you might find a small section of the London Wall or a plaque for Cripplegate. But regardless of what you set out to see, on all sides, the ancient is surrounded by the Brutal — by the Barbican Estate, which is, as Barnabas writes, 

“a landscape of gigantic concrete buildings and walkways, inhumanly vast in scale and hard in texture: the ultimate Brutalist council estate.”

In post-war Britain, people needed homes — people needed a city. As such, the solution to the problem was a utopian project built and designed by some of the very people who had watched history get leveled by the German Blitz. On the bombed ruins of Rome were built a lake, a conservatory, and a school. The promise was of a better future — but that is a promise, repeated through time, that no one but God can keep. And if you visit the site of Cripplegate today, once you read the few historical plaques around, you will inevitably search skyward. And there, you will find what Barnabas describes as,

“[…] Welfare State housing [with] vandal proof surfaces that have always been the durable containers not for the needy working class, rehoused from slums, but for the rich workers of the City of London, peppered with such architects and creative types as can afford the high prices.”

So it only took me a few hours disconnected from the rest of the world, limited by the strength and durability of my two feet, to find myself leaning against a Roman wall, facing the question that seems to dictate most of my days:

What am I giving up?

Because for the Britons, most gave up their identity – language, culture, society – for Roman comfort: safety; efficiency; promises of the State and those in power. And the men who built the Barbican were no different — the promises made to them were broken in due time. 

I’m not getting invaded, my home has never been bombed by the Germans, and I have both $10 to spare on a train ticket and a free evening in London. Nonetheless, I know that promises have been made to me. Promises of the internet — how I am reaching you now — were that of connection. But my brother spent more time online than anyone I’ve ever met, and he killed himself. Is that evidence of a kept promise or a broken one?

The promise today expands everfurther: we are now lonely, so a synthesized voice with sentences determined only by probability will be what brings us company. And worst of all: no one forces this upon me or you. There is not a man or service in the world that requires me to engage on these terms. But most days, we simply accept it as a perk of the times, because it is easier to eliminate the risk that inevitably comes with human interactions than to open ourselves up to the intense reality of human connection.

And when we find our satisfaction in reading the words of an algorithm which decides on the following string of letters by mathematical likelihood and not intelligence, as it replies, “That’s a great point,” to a point which is likely not great, and even objectively poor, we are more vulnerable than any who have come before us. Because for the first time in human history, we open the outer walls of our City to those who offer us comfort and ease and practicality in exchange for everything that is us.

Choosing to live a life of value is a purchase, and it’s one not all can easily afford to make. But for far too many of us, we can choose. And every day, I become more certain that to-day is the day in which we each take our stand. In the little ways — in the calling of a friend or the postcard sent in the mail; or in the large — in the continuing to live a life bound by physical reality, to continue to have human relations with those around us not in spite of their difficulty but because of their intimacy, to go to a church instead of watching a livestream, to sit quietly on the toilet instead of on your phone, to replace the battery in your phone instead of buying a new one, and to have children instead of spending the time after 5pm further optimizing some-thing for some-one some-where.

The only reason many people on this island still speak Welsh instead of Latin (or English) is because a small minority beyond the frontier, some 1,900 years ago, watched as their companions were enthralled with the baths, military, and whatever else it was that Rome had to offer and, despite the temptation to join in, first had the courage to state the obvious and ask, “what do I stand to lose?”

And the answer is always a tradeoff: that which gives a moment of comfort in exchange for a lifetime lacking intimacy, or a fiscal year with higher productivity in exchange for destroyed personal (or corporate) identity, or a lifetime of ease in exchange for never being blessed enough to face struggle.

Yet these are the things that give us purpose and humanity. It is no wonder, then, why Christ cautioned us greatly against placing our faith in, or succumbing to the temptation of, building our lives on that which will not last:

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”

Next time, and every time, convenience is offered, simply ask yourself — what am I losing? Then decide to be autonomous for a moment and determine: is the present worth the price?