the ivory-covered tower
Oh, I'm just stupid with happiness right now, irrationally delighted with the world. I came in from London last night and was promptly received into the arms of dear friends (and hauled off to Chiang Mai Kitchen to eat larb. Mmm, larb! It's still better than any I've had in New York). Then this morning, woke up in Merton Street to see a thick layer of snow falling over the city ('swaddled in snow', dear S. said at breakfast) and it continued to fall for hours, even past noon. This is more snow than we've had in New York yet this winter, and indeed more snow than I've ever seen in Oxford in all the years I spent here--I heard someone in Blackwell's say that it's the heaviest snowfall in a decade.
I've been slip-siding round in my non-snowproof boots all day, compulsively taking pictures like a silly tourist. Remapping the familiar paths, and laughing aloud in the middle of the street: at a pedagogical snowman in front of the RadCam, and the black-hatted porters of Christ Church watching snow fall on the Meadow from their gateway, and the juvenile glee of undergraduate snowball fights (I got caught in a lively Brasenose vs. Exeter battle in Brasenose Lane, and then while walking to lunch we saw a whole mob of Christ Church students run yelling through the lodge of Merton, presumably to stage an epic raid.) I love seeing half the city revert to childhood at the arrival of a few ounces of frozen water.
Oxford is a preposterously beautiful place anyway--though you can lose sight of it, living here--but in snow, it evokes all assorted, enchanted cliches. And particular memories--the first time I ever saw Oxford it was gilded with snow and sunlight, on an arctic winter day in 1999. I was eighteen, studying abroad for the first time, in Edinburgh, and traveling around during the Christmas break. I spent the whole day wandering around peeking into colleges and taking pictures--later lost, when the cheap camera was stolen in Dublin--and freezing, with only a thin, hip-length jacket. (Somehow I got halfway through a Scottish winter before buying a proper woolen coat, in the post-Christmas sales--I was stubborn and poor, and preferred to spend my money on bus tickets to new places rather than comfort). I remember myself that day as utterly alone and perfectly happy. And so cold that every half an hour I had to duck inside to thaw--so I picked bookstores, mostly: Blackwells, the OUP shop, Oxfam--and by the end of the day, the notion of applying for a scholarship to come study here had somehow taken hold. I spent a lot of 2003 wishing I'd never heeded that notion, but now there's no imagining my life without it.
Also, it's rather fun to be waxing academic again: to go to a lunchtime International Relations seminar, and drink coffee while hearing Kalypso Nicolaidis talk all about universalism and the European Union's need for a postcolonial ethos, to admit, oh, I miss this--this indulgent, wonderful business of constructing verbal cathedrals of ideas piled atop one another, and then watching the genial questioners hammer away, testing their strength. I am quite happy with my job lately (and in fact was enjoying the linkages--conceptual and prosaic--between the seminar & the work meetings of the last three days) but there's no doubt where my allegiances lie in the long run. Of course a third of the audience were familiar faces, mostly Antonians, including several fellow participants in the Transnationalism conference last spring.
And then later, the power went out in the internet cafe in St Aldates, and I just started laughing all over again. Now I'm curled up in the old Bodleian, despite having been imbecile enough to leave my Bod card in New York--the Admissions office kindly supplied a day pass, so here I sit typing away, and watching night fall over Catte Street. We are dining at High Table at Univ later--last time, I was seated across from a marvelously batty old don; I hope I'll get equally entertaining company tonight. I don't mind that this visit feels as temporary as it is, that the recurrent illusion of never having left is finally waning. It makes the relish of every moment all the more thorough.
I've been slip-siding round in my non-snowproof boots all day, compulsively taking pictures like a silly tourist. Remapping the familiar paths, and laughing aloud in the middle of the street: at a pedagogical snowman in front of the RadCam, and the black-hatted porters of Christ Church watching snow fall on the Meadow from their gateway, and the juvenile glee of undergraduate snowball fights (I got caught in a lively Brasenose vs. Exeter battle in Brasenose Lane, and then while walking to lunch we saw a whole mob of Christ Church students run yelling through the lodge of Merton, presumably to stage an epic raid.) I love seeing half the city revert to childhood at the arrival of a few ounces of frozen water.
Oxford is a preposterously beautiful place anyway--though you can lose sight of it, living here--but in snow, it evokes all assorted, enchanted cliches. And particular memories--the first time I ever saw Oxford it was gilded with snow and sunlight, on an arctic winter day in 1999. I was eighteen, studying abroad for the first time, in Edinburgh, and traveling around during the Christmas break. I spent the whole day wandering around peeking into colleges and taking pictures--later lost, when the cheap camera was stolen in Dublin--and freezing, with only a thin, hip-length jacket. (Somehow I got halfway through a Scottish winter before buying a proper woolen coat, in the post-Christmas sales--I was stubborn and poor, and preferred to spend my money on bus tickets to new places rather than comfort). I remember myself that day as utterly alone and perfectly happy. And so cold that every half an hour I had to duck inside to thaw--so I picked bookstores, mostly: Blackwells, the OUP shop, Oxfam--and by the end of the day, the notion of applying for a scholarship to come study here had somehow taken hold. I spent a lot of 2003 wishing I'd never heeded that notion, but now there's no imagining my life without it.
Also, it's rather fun to be waxing academic again: to go to a lunchtime International Relations seminar, and drink coffee while hearing Kalypso Nicolaidis talk all about universalism and the European Union's need for a postcolonial ethos, to admit, oh, I miss this--this indulgent, wonderful business of constructing verbal cathedrals of ideas piled atop one another, and then watching the genial questioners hammer away, testing their strength. I am quite happy with my job lately (and in fact was enjoying the linkages--conceptual and prosaic--between the seminar & the work meetings of the last three days) but there's no doubt where my allegiances lie in the long run. Of course a third of the audience were familiar faces, mostly Antonians, including several fellow participants in the Transnationalism conference last spring.
And then later, the power went out in the internet cafe in St Aldates, and I just started laughing all over again. Now I'm curled up in the old Bodleian, despite having been imbecile enough to leave my Bod card in New York--the Admissions office kindly supplied a day pass, so here I sit typing away, and watching night fall over Catte Street. We are dining at High Table at Univ later--last time, I was seated across from a marvelously batty old don; I hope I'll get equally entertaining company tonight. I don't mind that this visit feels as temporary as it is, that the recurrent illusion of never having left is finally waning. It makes the relish of every moment all the more thorough.
posted by kitabet at 9:00 AM
1 Comments:
It's giddy-making to read about how happy you are, and how at home "over there." Wonderful times.
Well, when you return to...ahem...civilization, let's get together. Hopefully, it would have stopped freezing back then and gone back to unseasonable warmth, so that venturing out of the house doesn't have to be preceded by Last Rites and revised wills.
Happy trails!
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