towery city: scattered thoughts upon arrival
My God, this country is so green.
Everything is just the same ('stop saying that!!!' said thariel after the third time) because nothing in Oxford really ever seems to change. Except the people: certainly, I did.
The bag I left in the basement of the house in Merton St is full of clothes I had forgotten I even owned. The books on the shelves upstairs, though, I've kept count of in my mind the whole time.
I am so sleep-deprived as to be nearly hallucinating, but the disjuncture is only temporal--ten minutes past arrival, it's as if I'd never left at all. The complete ease with which I sink back into this life--not a ripple on the surface--is always a bit eerie. My feet will sleepwalk me down the road to Jericho and to the door of No. 35 Cardigan Street if I'm not careful.
In a 15-min circuit round the city centre to top-up my phone account, go to Boots, etc, I ran into a) a coxswain from my boat club, b) Dame Jessica (the Warden of Merton), c) a fellow ------- Scholar, and d) a friend from my college. There is nothing unusual about this; in fact, that's a pretty average roundup for a walk round Broad Street, the High, and Cornmarket during term time when it's not raining. The smallness of the Oxford universe can be annoying as hell when you live here, but it's also kind of charming, especially in contrast to NY (In Oxford, the modes of social existence are few but tangible -Amit Chaudhuri).
Oh bicycle, how I miss you.
Ah, English late-spring weather: the sun comes out long enough to tempt you into peeling off layers of clothing, and then reneges on all its promises. And other May sights: students in subfusc and carnations outside Exam Schools, and glitter on the street from the celebrations when they exit, rowers speeding down to the river for Summer Eights (oh how I wish I were among them), tour groups starting to invade the quads, everything blooming.
I recognize the smell of Blackwells. And of the stairwells in the old Bod. And the feel of the cobblestones on Merton Street through the soles of my shoes. The body remembers these things.
Speaking of rowing, tomorrow I will sneak down to the river to watch St Antony's race in the women's third division. None of the girls know I'm here, unless the boat club secretary has leaked word: I am planning to surprise them, so that when they row back after their race, they will see their former captain on the bank, shouting and waving and cheering them on and generally making a spectacle of myself. I will try very hard not to cry, but odd are I will fail. I am terribly sentimental about rowing. (No one can bathe in the same river twice, not even in the Isis -Dorothy L Sayers).
Old-fashioned spicy British ginger beer is truly one of the finest things in life.
All my ambivalence about this place--do I miss it? did I love it?--comes rushing back. But my allegiances are not to places but to people, and how very good it is to be among these people again. After the initial hugs and hooting and surprise at being tangible once again (no more disembodied voices on the phone) thariel & I had a greasy lunch in the Covered Market and resumed the unbroken conversation...dissertation talk, tales of Amitav Ghosh and Michael Walzer, recent dates and future job prospects, the relative merits of our students, memories of a daylong drive in central Anatolia almost two! years ago, what we will write next and who should publish it.... Dear S. is still at work (darling if you should happen to be reading this, I snuck into yr room and stole yr laptop adapter) but we'll reunite ourselves this evening, and then there will be a leisurely dinner in the company of many friends. I am staying awake on the fuel of pure giddy happiness.
[postscript: how nice be among streets & lanes called Catte and Magpie and Holywell and Longwall and Logic. So much more pleasant than numbers and dead generals!]
Everything is just the same ('stop saying that!!!' said thariel after the third time) because nothing in Oxford really ever seems to change. Except the people: certainly, I did.
The bag I left in the basement of the house in Merton St is full of clothes I had forgotten I even owned. The books on the shelves upstairs, though, I've kept count of in my mind the whole time.
I am so sleep-deprived as to be nearly hallucinating, but the disjuncture is only temporal--ten minutes past arrival, it's as if I'd never left at all. The complete ease with which I sink back into this life--not a ripple on the surface--is always a bit eerie. My feet will sleepwalk me down the road to Jericho and to the door of No. 35 Cardigan Street if I'm not careful.
In a 15-min circuit round the city centre to top-up my phone account, go to Boots, etc, I ran into a) a coxswain from my boat club, b) Dame Jessica (the Warden of Merton), c) a fellow ------- Scholar, and d) a friend from my college. There is nothing unusual about this; in fact, that's a pretty average roundup for a walk round Broad Street, the High, and Cornmarket during term time when it's not raining. The smallness of the Oxford universe can be annoying as hell when you live here, but it's also kind of charming, especially in contrast to NY (In Oxford, the modes of social existence are few but tangible -Amit Chaudhuri).
Oh bicycle, how I miss you.
Ah, English late-spring weather: the sun comes out long enough to tempt you into peeling off layers of clothing, and then reneges on all its promises. And other May sights: students in subfusc and carnations outside Exam Schools, and glitter on the street from the celebrations when they exit, rowers speeding down to the river for Summer Eights (oh how I wish I were among them), tour groups starting to invade the quads, everything blooming.
I recognize the smell of Blackwells. And of the stairwells in the old Bod. And the feel of the cobblestones on Merton Street through the soles of my shoes. The body remembers these things.
Speaking of rowing, tomorrow I will sneak down to the river to watch St Antony's race in the women's third division. None of the girls know I'm here, unless the boat club secretary has leaked word: I am planning to surprise them, so that when they row back after their race, they will see their former captain on the bank, shouting and waving and cheering them on and generally making a spectacle of myself. I will try very hard not to cry, but odd are I will fail. I am terribly sentimental about rowing. (No one can bathe in the same river twice, not even in the Isis -Dorothy L Sayers).
Old-fashioned spicy British ginger beer is truly one of the finest things in life.
All my ambivalence about this place--do I miss it? did I love it?--comes rushing back. But my allegiances are not to places but to people, and how very good it is to be among these people again. After the initial hugs and hooting and surprise at being tangible once again (no more disembodied voices on the phone) thariel & I had a greasy lunch in the Covered Market and resumed the unbroken conversation...dissertation talk, tales of Amitav Ghosh and Michael Walzer, recent dates and future job prospects, the relative merits of our students, memories of a daylong drive in central Anatolia almost two! years ago, what we will write next and who should publish it.... Dear S. is still at work (darling if you should happen to be reading this, I snuck into yr room and stole yr laptop adapter) but we'll reunite ourselves this evening, and then there will be a leisurely dinner in the company of many friends. I am staying awake on the fuel of pure giddy happiness.
[postscript: how nice be among streets & lanes called Catte and Magpie and Holywell and Longwall and Logic. So much more pleasant than numbers and dead generals!]
posted by kitabet at 7:07 AM
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