From a Room in Whitechapel

Whitechapel rooves are an uneven palette of architecture. There's dirty 20th century tile and glass reinforced with wire. There is a tall brick chimney, isolated amidst the new buildings, the last soldier still at his post. There's the looming Victorian schoolhouse to the south, thuglike with its dusty spectre of dead schoolmasters and the cane. My favourite, though, is the newest: twin blue-shining blocks that stand foursquare against a sky full of the comet-trails of aeroplanes. It is a hospital.

Each block has big windows, and every night they are filled with watery light. I stare so hard I feel I can sense the inmates, small and hunched like wild animals that are caged in their sickness. The reassurance lies in the certainty of life. The hospital stands as a lighthouse shining solidarity through the lonely dark hours of the morning, those hours that seperate every human being from one another like ships sailing apart on a midnight ocean.