The Last Word

I've been home now for almost four days, and now I think its finally time to wrap up this blog. I'll be thinking about my time abroad for a long time, but all chronicles have to come to an end at some point, even if the adventures don't. There is one final episode I have not had the guts or the heart to write about yet, though I think it is the most meaningful and earth-shaking aspect of my experience at Oxford. So here goes. The big finale of my experience at Oxford.

About two weeks before the end of term, I got myself into an extra-curricular tiff with one of my favorite tutors. Its all a bit foggy how it began, but it somehow came about that this professor implicitly challenged my assertion that Harry Potter could play a useful role in the academic world. He maintained that it did not, which of course made me bristle, if you know anything about me and Harry Potter, you know that it informs my whole philosophy... or at least, I thought it did. Our casual disagreement finally came to a head when, after a lecture one day, I asked him if he would promise to read whatever scholarly Harry Potter literature I could come up with. I wanted him to see how wrong he was to slander a genre so dear to me, a series which I had informed the way I think since I started reading it in the fourth grade. I thought if I could just compile a bibliography impressive enough, I could wow him into admitting that he was being a pretentious, stubborn ivory tower scholar, and his refusal to acknowledge Potter's value in an academic setting was based on the trite assumption that anything popular is not worthy. He was very amused by my proposition, and promised to read anything I could come up with by the end of term. Full of righteousness and strengthened by the knowledge that I alone could redeem the underdog series in the eyes of the Oxford authorities, I set to work researching Harry Potter in academia in addition to the other work I had to do for classes. 

Despite a full blown inquiry at Blackwell's and several emails to a known Potter aficionado back at St. Olaf, I had an incredibly pathetic scholarly reading list to present to my tutor.  I compared my three sources with the three page lists he had given me to read up on Utopian literature earlier in the semester. It was laughable, and I was wrong. Ok, so HP hadn't made its grand entrance onto the academic scene yet. That's ok, I thought, it is still a new series, it just needs an opportunity- it needs an introduction, or else it will be scorned forever by the academic community as a worthless, popular series- the stuff of Warner Brothers, but not to be dragged into Oxfordian matters. That was when I decided to write the damn thing myself. If I couldn't find the right scholarly material I needed to impress my tutor, I would write it myself. It was probably the stupidest thing I have ever done, including the time I told Miss Morrie she was a bigoted condescending pig in front of the whole class and got sent to in-school detention for the rest of the day. So, with one week left in the semester, an exam, and a big paper looming on the near horizon, I decided to write an extra essay, an apologia pro Harry Potter.


I have never worked so hard on an essay. I thought about it when I wasn't writing it, and I edited it multiple times a day, deleting whole pages, and rewriting the same paragraph over and over. I included footnotes. I tried to frame the whole validation in the pastoral tradition, which I knew to be the tutor's pet subject. In some drafts, I even pulled lines from his very own lectures and inserted them in the footnotes to support my own points, but in the end I decided this was too insulting, and removed them (my favorite was from a lecture on Milton's Areopagitica in which he said, "scholars only mock the things they truly fear.") Anyway, at 4:00AM on my day of departure, I finally printed off a copy of my Apologia and put it in his mailbox with a shaking hand. I wanted it to be good. I wanted him not to laugh at it, and more than anything I wanted to prove that he was wrong, and Harry Potter had unmeasurable potential as an untapped source for moral ideologies, literary comparisons, and historical commentaries. By writing a 2600 word essay describing Potter's continuation of his own favorite literary tradition, I hoped to prove my point. 


Within 24 hours, he had written me an email response. It was three pages long. It will be impossible to describe exactly what was said, and with what tones, and how it affected me, even if I reproduced the whole Apologia and his comments for you to read, but when I was finally brave enough to read his response, I was shocked. He seemed to not only have read the Potter books (a fact which he had previously denied) but he thanked me honestly for starting this conversation with him. That was the good news. The bad news was that what he had to say threw me for the worst loop of my life. Again, I am unable to recreate the response for you, but the main gist was that Potter is ultimately escapist literature. Rowling's world might serve as a sort of Arcadia for my generation  (Gothic architecture and wizards serving the same purpose as pastures and shepherds in classical pastoralism) but it remains escapist. It does not address the problems of today, or if it does, it buries them too far beneath the scenery and smoke and mirrors of wizarding life. He seemed to appreciate my enthusiasm, but wished I had applied it elsewhere. He kindly forwarded a final reading list for me, which I feel I will have to complete before I ever show my face in Oxford again. I was utterly humbled, and am not quite sure what to think of myself or my favorite series. I guess, this is what academia is all about, and I just need to learn not to get so emotionally attached to my subjects.


So that's that. Oxford has left me with a lot to think about, Arcadias and the value of nostalgia/escapist literature not in the least. I've traveled to a lot of places in the past months that could almost be the Arcadian paradise man seeks. It all depends what interests you: Oxford could be an Arcadia for librarians, Rome is almost perfect for the historian in many ways, and Paris for lovers, among other things. There are spits of gardens and countryside in between everything, but none of these are large enough to serve as a true classical Arcadia these days. And Vermont, of course, my home, is a type of Arcadia itself, one of the last truly green places on earth, but now that I've come home and started reading up on global warming, I feel like even the Northeast Kingdom is sullied as an ideal landscape for men to play out an ideal life. The more I think about it (and I hope I'm about to think about it quite a lot more), the more I start to feel that the true Arcadia is not a place, but a connection between people. This has become apparent to me as I've stayed in touch with my family and friends through video chats, emails and letters these past months. What makes a place close to perfect is when I am with any one of them. As Theocritus and Spenser have Romanticized and longed for the pasture of a bygone  Golden Age, and as some 11-year olds have sought for their Hogwarts owl in the mail, I have found myself longing for my old company more than anything else this semester. I am not sure what that means yet, but if I ever figure it out, I will get back to you. For now, I am going to close the book on this blog, and start working on my next story: "Henry and Francois: how a jaded American scholar and a middle class Parisian cockroach were perfect for one another."


Thanks for reading everyone.

The City of Lights

Guilaine and I left our teeny tiny apartment in Rome just after dinner on Friday April 22, and hopped (as gracefully as any two ladies could ever hop with so much luggage) on a very crowded bus to the train station. From there, we caught a night train to Paris, City of Lights. I love night trains- the way they whisk you off to someplace new while you're sleeping, and how the jolt of the wheels on the rail eventually subsides into a rocking motion, and the sound of the whistle seems to be heard from farther and farther off as sleep overcomes you. Gui and I shared a compartment with a little French family. The mother and little daughter (about eight) were equally cool towards us - Mademoiselle laughed with as much derision as an eight year old can muster when I exhausted my French vocabulary asking her name, and if she'd had a good time in Rome. The first thing she said to me was "adieu" the next morning as she got off at Lyon. Her father was completely good-natured and used his scant and heavily accented English to make jokes about the Italians in the compartments on either side of us. He also nodded appreciatively and tried to encourage our pathetic attempts at French, even when Guilaine slipped into Italian (that was the last straw for Madame and Mademoiselle, who, from that point on, ruined their attempts to pretend we did not exist by shooting us dirty looks throughout the evening). We passed most of the evening in the dining car, sharing a little travel size bottle of wine and a ham sandwich made with bread so white, it probably shortened my life three or four days. When it got too dark outside to see the countryside whizzing by, we shifted our attention to making eyes at the bartender. He became more and more attractive as he proved conversant in English, Italian, French, and German throughout the night. I got another opportunity to feel ashamed for only speaking English.

The next morning I woke up because the train had come to a sudden, lurching halt. When I wandered back to the dining car, there was only one man there, who asked me in French why I was up so early. I liked him, he had a pair of twinkling, old world eyes that I found reassuring- he also was kind enough to ignore my heinous French. He was able to tell me that we were stopped  because something had been caught under the train - a piece of trash, no doubt, but I never found out. When I asked him where we were, he said, "a beautiful field just south of Lyon, and what better place to stop?" and then he left the car, presumably to twinkle at other world-weary people. The scene out the window moved me deeply, though I have no idea why: an endless field of fresh spring green waved from our track to the far distant horizon, which sloped up, and was crowned with a ridge of dark pines. A small herd of brown cows munched near the tracks, and looked at us as though train breakdowns on this track were the main component of the ennui they suffered. They were unlike Vermont cows, they had a sort of devil-may-care look about them. Without speaking, they seemed to say, "go ahead, tip me, see what happens" ... with a French accent of course. One dirt road ran perpendicular to the tracks, with a single farmhouse situated about halfway between us and the horizon. The whole scene was enveloped in early morning dew, and the fog was so thick it would have given British fog a run for its money. It made me think of WWII and phantoms of de Gaulle's Resistance fighters continued to flit across the landscape even after I shook my head and blinked. Some of them fell as they ran, cut down by Nazi bullets, and others ran on, vanishing into the mists, and still no one else came into the dining car. I was glad when we started up again. A  little later, the bar opened, and I could get a hot cocoa to help keep the phantoms away.

We arrived in Paris mid-morning, and met up with Dad at the train station. He had a huge throbbing wound on his hand, and explained with expert nonchalance, that he had been attacked by gypsies in a deserted subway station the previous night. Apparently they had trapped him on an escalator, hitting the emergency stop, and cutting him off at the top and bottom. When they went for his wallet he apparently karate-chopped at their neck, and was bitten. I can picture him him bellowing like a wounded rhinoceros at this, and I believed him when he said that he then put up such a fight that they quickly ran off, without his wallet. It really is a spectacular bite wound- all purple and infected-looking, complete with teeth marks. Luckily nothing else of that magnitude happened while we were in Paris. Gui and I allowed Dad to steer us around the city since he knows it so well already, and we benefited from his superior knowledge of good restaurants and fluent French. He was only mocked once for his Canadian accent. As in Rome, much of our time was spent wandering around and taking frequent rests at cafes, enjoying the human fauna. Highlights of Paris include the Louvre (huge line to see the Mona Lisa, but no one standing in front of the nearby Raphels- WHY?), the Garnier Opera House (box 5 has a little plaque on it that says "Reserved for the Phantom of the Opera"- awesome), some big famous Paris department stores (Gui and I got yelled at for trying on hats we were obviously not going to buy), a three hour meal at Dad's favorite restaurant, le Lyonnais (direct quote from Dad, "there is sex, there is paradise, and then, there is le Lyonnias"), and an afternoon at les Bagatelles gardens. We also joined what seemed like half of Paris at Easter mass at Notre Dame. This was a great moment for me, because I had studied the cathedral at Oxford for one of my tutorials, and I knew exactly what I was looking at- they just don't do early Gothic cathedrals like they used to. Of course, the best part of the trip was Dad's constant commentary- a mix of pure academic professorial lecturing and mildly inappropriate commentary on tourists and "grotesque" modern architecture. This is one thing I cannot recreate on a blog, not even if I had written down all that he said.

Paris was very beautiful, maybe my favorite big city of all time. The height limit on the buildings and the amount of open space make it seem more open, the air more free (despite the thick second hand cigarette smoke in the air). I loved the history and the cafe culture, and it was fun to partake of the many pretentions of that culture for the week... still, by the time I got on the plane back to Vermont, I was more than ready to breath the fresh air, and see the lake, and hug my mom and my dog- not to mention do a load of laundry. I found the City of Lights to be dazzling and refreshing at first, but stare at any light too long and its bound to become blinding. 

The Eternal City

Pictures of our adventures in the Eternal City may be found here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150158494564333.299236.796519332

Rome is definitely the closest thing we have to Minas Tirath, the White City. If I were going to be called home to the clear ringing of silver trumpets, surely this would be the place for it. Guilaine and I have been based in a teeny tiny apartment in the heart of the old city for four days now, and we have another three until we take an overnight train (read: adventure!) to Paris to meet up with Papa Andre. Four days is practically no time at all - on Rome's vast time line it is not even a perceptible blip, so you can imagine how we've been scurrying around trying to see as much as possible.

The very first thing we did on our first morning was go on a run to get a lay of the land. This run brought us west across the Tiber (so many important dead bodies have been dragged from its depths since ancient times!) to the base of an impossibly steep hill. We paused to look at each other doubtfully, and then charged ahead, breathing like fatally wounded rhinoceroses by the time we reached the top. The eastern view was breathtaking and well worth the trouble. We turned and continued at random (having long since ditched our map), going in more than one circle and dodging between the cobbles and many off-leash, city-sized dogs. Finally we found the Aurelian Wall, built in the late 3rd century, encircling the old city. It cast a long shadow in the mid morning sun, and our sweat chilled in its deep shade. It took us down the hills (one of the seven hills of Rome??),  past complacent moped-riders, splashing fountains and old grannies, and right into Saint Peter's square. We were a little shocked to find ourselves under the huge, recognizable dome - we had been so preoccupied we didn't even see it coming. We stopped running and walked reverently across the square, flooded with tourists in disorderly lines, all orbiting around the massive fountain, whose gentle splashing was lost amid the roar. No Pope sightings, but we will have another chance tomorrow when we take an official tour of Vatican City.

Runs have definitely been a highlight for us- it is a great way to see the city. We've also taken some walks of epic proportions with notable destinations: the Appian Way and the catacombs, for one. The Appian Way is an ancient Roman road on the outskirts of the city, still paved with cobbles as big as your head. The fields spread out from this artery, colored with poppies and wisteria growing off the trees in veils, but don't be fooled. Underneath is an expansive network of tunnels, the halls of the ancient dead. We went into the catacomb of St. Castillo, final resting place of popes, martyrs, saints and lots of normal dead Roman aristocrats.

Other highlights include the Forum and the Colosseum- both were worth wading through the humanity and patiently refusing to buy parasols and fans from pushy peddlers while we stood in the ticket lines. It was amazing to think about how long these ruins have survived, but also somewhat sobering to realize how much reconstruction and salvage work had been done on them- kind of like the existential question about the old, patched pair of trousers (if you eventually replace every inch of fabric with a patch, are they still the same trousers?)

We also went to a Roman bath, which Guilaine enjoyed as a spa experience, and I enjoyed as a historical experience. First you spend an hour alternating between room temperature and 100% humidity rooms, and they give you this nice soap that is supposed to open your pores. That part was nice, and the old men in barely-there swim suits gave me the double advantage of feeling very modest and also very authentically ancient (I think their topic of conversation might have even been authentically ancient Roman: politics and women). The second part of the bath involved getting scrubbed down with a brillo-pad sort of sponge by this very intense woman who looked like my middle school gym teacher (her necklace even looked like a whistle around her neck) and then plunging into a freezing pool. On the plus side, my skin was so raw (radiant?) when I came out that I managed to make sustained eye contact with a gorgeous Italian man getting off his moped- a flirtation method Molly Obrien has been trying to teach me since 8th grade.  Mi dispiace, non parlo Italiano Signore Moped (sorry, I don't speak Italian).


While all the main events are pretty exciting, the filler time is actually probably my favorite part of the experience so far. Guilaine and I have been keeping well-hydrated with cappucino and fresh blood-orange juice. They don't do take out coffee here in Italy, you just stand at the coffee bar and have a quick drink in a real cup. It is so much nicer that way! And allows for better human interaction. Gui's Italian is so good we usually get to participate in some pretty telling conversations about Americans:
"Ah, mama mia! These Americans are crawling all over the place! And none of them even try to speak the language!"
"Ah, I'm sorry..."
"Why should you be sorry, eh? How are the pastries? They are new today..."
"Very good, I like the cream ones"
"You should have had the marmalade, the marmalade ones are much better..."

This works as long as I don't open my mouth and blow our cover, Gui just has to explain what is going on in a whisper, and I just nod and beam at them all and say "grazie" very quietly, like I am to shy to talk. The food is really stellar, especially coming out of England -I repress a shudder when I compare the fresh pasta and sweet tomato sauce with the tin-can beans on dry toast. The ingredients here are very simple, but fresh. For dinner tonight I had pasta with cheese and pepper. It was so delicious I almost didn't have room for gelato (almost). The market is worth a mention too- there are probably many in Rome, but there is one in particular close to our apartment that takes up the whole piazza, full of flowers and fresh fruit and crazy-shaped pasta.... we got a little box of tiny strawberries after our run this morning. They were all no bigger than my thumbnail, and sweet sweet sweet, with the little white blossom petals still clinging to the stems around the top.

That is all I have time for right now, yet there is so much more to Rome than I've said here. It is a bustling, vivid place, full of traditions as strange and old as the pagans, but also sights as common as a policeman (carribiniere) flirting with a group of "lost" lady tourists. As vivid and lively as it is, I am still incredulous when I stop to think how this city thrives on decaying ruins, surrounded by miles of catacombs, where the ancient dead sit enthroned.

My Love Affair With the City of Oxford

The Carfax clock tower has just chimed 11:00. After the little introduction chime, it gets to the second stroke of the hour, and then the University Church clock tower begins its chorus, several pitches lower. The regularity of this idiosyncrasy is like a song, and I can cue the University Church clock like a conductor ever hour if I want. In about five minutes there will be a little rush of pedestrain traffic under my window as the pubs empty and people stumble home. And then all will be quiet for the night, until about 6:30am when the delivery trucks start parking and beeping and honking and crashing around in the alley beneath our windows. I have started recognizing some of the voices of the men who drive those trucks. For instance, I can now distinguish the thick accent of the 6:45 delivery truck man (who I imagine with a ruddy complexion) from the higher pitched, slightly fairer-spoken 7:00 delivery man. They yell things to their underlings, who shift boxes noisily at those ungodly hours, but do not speak loudly enough to carry up to my fifth floor windows.

At 7:30am exactly, the street-sweeper-mobile will drive down New Inn Hall Street going North, its rumbling fading away as it drives by. At 7:35 it comes rumbling back down the street, the sound growing like a wave, and then fading as it makes it way back South towards Queen Street. As soon as the night's trash has been swept away, it is finally safe for the city people to come out and start walking around importantly with their coffees. The lady at Morton's coffee house (right next to our building) doesn't know me yet; sometimes I run down for a cocoa during our half hour break between lectures... but she does know the man who arrives right after me. Every. Single. Day. He is bald and wears no cap, but has a very normal looking sort of sports jacket, and usually a newspaper. He is the type of person who blends into a crowd perfectly, but I think the Morton's barista lady has a little thing for him. She coos over him and calls him by name (Robert) and always gets his latte ready in advance. It must be nice to be a regular. There you are, some schmo in a nondescript sports jacket, and nobody notices you until you become a regular at this cafe....

And that is how it happens. One day, you're just an innocent bystander, a tourist, a visitor, a foreign student, blending in with the crowd. And then, the next day, you're a somebody. People recognize you, and you know street names. You're a regular customer at this hole in the wall cafe that nobody knows but you and your office mates. The barista has a crush on you, and calls you by your first name. You have a favorite table. You have certain cracks in the sidewalk you avoid stepping on, just out of superstition. You wait to go outside until 7:36 because you don't want to run into the street-sweeper-mobile as it blindly chugs North and South up your road. You can cue the church bells. It is easy to think that just because you know the city so well, it knows you back. It is so easy to convince yourself that because you plan your day around the movements within the city, it plans its day around you. A person could start feeling mighty important going on like this. A girl might start feeling like she's in love, and not know why, just because she can sing along with the clock chimes.

The first month of my time at Oxford was so vivid and confusing. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. I didn't know which pubs to try, or, when I looked into a boutique window if it was where snobby she-she people shopped, or if it was for environmentally minded hipsters. I couldn't tell you if Morton's cocoa was better than Cafe Nero (its not, its just cheaper), I couldn't tell you how to get to the bus stop, or when the libraries closed, or what streets to avoid at night. I was afraid of being in public places, I think, because I was just so unused to it all - none of it was mine, and Oxford was a cold, indifferent stranger, full of secrets that were too dear to be entrusted to the likes of me.  At Saint Olaf, I can sit on the low wall outside the chapel, and know that no one is going to reproach me. I can put my feet on the couches in fireside with confidence, and even go to the Buntrock bathroom in my socks (errr, that is... if I wanted to... not that I have...). At first, Oxford would never have allowed me such intimacies. But now, I feel like it trusts me a little more.

When I first came to Oxford, I used to see people sitting on the steps of the Bodelian, smoking, drinking coffees, laughing with their friends. I didn't have any friends, I was too scared to walk into a coffee place for weeks, and I certainly didn't feel any entitlement to my own personal perch on the steps of a 400 year old building. I am not sure if I do now, even... but I'm so close. Oxford has softened a little to me, and I'm not even sure when or how that happened. Its the little things that add up, I guess, but now,  with less than a week to go, I feel like this city might possibly love me. When you know someone so well, it is impossible for them to not know just as many things about you. When I sing along with the church bells, tolling the hour, its like finishing my friends' sentences. When I take a shortcut through a little pedestrian alley, its kind of like the city is sneaking me through one of its back doors, for VIP members only, no tourists allowed. When I go on runs in the 12th century fields, I know exactly where to turn into the seemingly impassable hedges. About twenty yards down, there'll be a gap in the underbrush, and a jump-able wooden fence leading into the next set of fields, though you'd never see if it you didn't know it was there. I equate this with going through my best friend's backpack and knowing exactly where they keep that tube of chapstick I'm sure I'm entitled to borrow... in the little tiny pocket, on the right hand side. The gargoyles and grotesques on the old buildings are all recognizable now that I've walked past them so many times. When I close my eyes I can see the west facade of the Old Bodelian, and I can see the crocodile grotesque, the dragonish waterspout gargoyle, and the little stone detail of the farmer with his sycle, all in a row. It is kind of like being able to close my eyes and see a familiar face, and know where every freckle is, and just where the dimples appear.

I don't know when this love affair started. All I know is that I will be very sad to leave this beautiful city. These things happen gradually. You feel so uncomfortable and lost and shy in a place, and then all of a sudden, it is almost your home. It is the same with new people. Oxford could be a home for me, I think. It is so beautiful, and has much character and personality.

But Oxford is a city, and not a person. Three and a half months may be enough time to learn a city plan and figure out where the good cafes are, but sadly, it has not been enough time to get to know my fellow students very well, a fact we have all sheepishly affirmed with each other in trailing off sentences and murmurs. Places are just empty stages, even if they are very beautiful and old, and rich with history. Even if they are so easy to personify, and you can almost convince yourself that an actual city loves you and takes care of you like a roommate. Oxford is just a stage. There are people running across it every which way, but they are not my people. I know the stage very well, but I keep mishearing the stage directions, and all the cues are being called out with such a thick accent, I haven't quite caught on yet. I don't know who is playing a character, and who is being their real self. This the cast and crew of Oxford, and if I had another semester, maybe I would come to know and love them as much as I love the cast of Olaf or Vermont. As it is, I leave Friday morning at 6:30 am, and I have to say, I am very eager to be meeting a familiar leading lady of my own cast- my sister will meet me in Rome at 3:00 when my plane lands, and it doesn't really matter that we're in a new setting, we'll be together. The same will happen in Vermont in May, and at Olaf in the fall, and the happy thought consoles me for the loss of the beautiful city of Oxford.

I am glad to be leaving so early on Friday morning. There will be fewer people out on the street, just the delivery men whose voices I am so used to hearing through my open window. It will be just me and the city, together one last time, for a fond farewell. Someday I'll come back, and we'll do things right, Oxford. I'll meet you're family, and you'll meet mine, and of course they'll love you as much as I do. Isn't that what all lovers say at their last meeting?

The Letter Writer

Now that the official Oxford term is over, I have been demoted from student to visitor status in the eyes of the omnipotent Bodelian bureaucracy. No more library access for the likes of me. This means I spend a lot of time reading books in Blackwell's, the largest bookstore in the galaxy. Luckily, there is a proportionately sized Cafe Nero on the second floor where I like to sit and drink delicious hot cocoa and read my little stack of unpurchased books (quite illegally). This was exactly where I was sitting a few days ago, in a nice patch of sun, reading Theocritus. As I read, a skinny, middle aged gentleman tottered over to an empty table across from me. He reminded me of a high school English teacher I had once, with a gray-streaked ponytail and fang earring and glasses. He had that helplessly dazed look characteristic of so many Oxford citizens who drink ideas instead of water and breath books instead of air. There was something else about him too, but I can't say what. His clothes were all black, and his face appeared to be disembodied, vivid and white above the black mass of indistinct coats and scarves. He sat down with a tiny little cappuccino and a glass of water (room temperature, no ice, like all beverages this side of the pond). He also had a greeting card, just purchased, and still wrapped in cellophane. The next 30 minutes of his life was spent doing something extremely ordinary, but with such intensity, I chose to use Theocritus as a prop to disguise the fact that  I was watching him rather than actually read it.

First, he arranged his drinks: the water went to his far left. After several moments, he seemed to decide that the best place for the cappuccino would be  the far right edge of the little, European-sized table. The still-wrapped card took center stage, while the receipt was hastily whisked away into a pocket, like a carpenter would brush wood shavings away from his finished masterpiece. He sat back, unsmiling, and considered the arrangement. He took a tiny sip of the right-hand beverage, and made a face of disgust. Next, he took three sugar packets and shook them down for an unnecessarily long time. Ten seconds, twelve seconds, fifteen... all the while staring ahead into the crowd of coffee drinkers, seeing something I could not see. After pouring two sugars into the water, and the third into his cappuccino, our man finally opened the cellophane wrapping of his card. This was done with a paper clip, (which had previously been serving as a tie clip), most expertly, in one swift, decisive movement I would not have believed possible from a man who had just spent two minutes arranging his drinks, and a whole quarter of a minute shaking down his sugar packets.

He moved quickly now, as though the card would become stale in the fresh air. He brought a black bic pen out from a nondescript bag under the table, and sent the cellophane wrapping down to join the rejected receipt in the inner recesses of his pocket (he was the sort of man who makes you want to know the contents of his pockets). He flashed the card open so fast, I never saw what was on the outside, although the inside was momentarily blank. I was sitting a mere three feet from him, so crammed are the Cafe Nero tables, and even though I had remembered my glasses that day, I could not make out anything other than tiny, nondescript dots of letters blossoming from his pen. Its better that way, no one should read other peoples' letters, but I would not have had the willpower to refrain. He stopped after the first page and drank off the cappuccino in one go, gagging. He continued to write as steadily and determinedly as he had shaken the sugar packets, and this time I am sure it was words in his ears that I could not hear rather than scenes ahead of him in the cafe that I could not see. He wrote all the way down to the bottom of the second half of the card without pausing to think of what to write next, or even to shake his pen, and I worried that he would burn holes in the card. Finally he put the pen down, and brought his eyes down to the table, rather than bringing the card up to his eyes. I watched his beady, nervous black eyes zoom left to right, left to right, and slowly down the page, and then up to the second half, finally stopping at the bottom right corner, as though they had come to rest on some unpleasant sight, like a corpse.

He blew on the ink, as though a bic pen would leave wet smudges like a quill, and then closed the card, and left if lying face down in front of him. He reached for the water now, and drank it off hastily (I should explain that water in Europe is served in almost shot-glass sized cups - it would not be strange to drink off a glass of water in one, shot-like motion). The next five minutes were spent staring at the empty back of the card. He traced the Hallmark logo with his finger, and then put his hands on the edge of the table, looking like he might push himself up out of his seat at any moment. He stayed like that for a long time, and his stillness was just as impressive to watch as though he had been performing gymnastics all around the room. I would have given my first born child to know the contents of the letter, but I feel confident in making such excessive claims because I know that I will never ever know what it said. After some minutes his hands began to shake, almost imperceptibly, and he smiled. I hadn't notice that he had been unsmiling until he finally did curl his lip. He had dimples, and a cracked tooth that suggested charisma. I would have offered up a second child to know why he smiled. Whatever the thought, it made him pick up the pen again, this time with utter ease and relaxation, contrasting maddeningly with the frenzied character in which he had thrown the pen down some minutes before.

The entire back of the card was soon filled with the same neat, minuscule script, and if he signed the card, his name blended in completely with the words preceding it. He blew on the words again, to dry the ink, and then read the entire thing over again. This time he was like a sea after a storm, his eyes drifting from left to right, top to bottom... still mechanically, but on their own time, not driven by some inner frenzy. His chest rose and fell like someone who sleeps in the morning after a long night of fever, and still he smiled. When he had finished reading (without making any editing marks, I might add), he blew on the words a third and final time, closed the card, and reinforced the crease by dragging a long, strong thumbnail down the spine of the card. And then, without his usual period of consideration, as though he had been planning on doing it all along, he took the three sugar wrappers (which had been resting on the cappuccino saucer) and added them to the envelope ahead of the card. I thought of the recipient opening the letter, and holding those packets in their hand, and knowing exactly what they meant- agh! and I will never know! Its like hearing one end of a whispered phone call. I could die from frustration.  He proceeded to lick the edge of the envelope with the expertise of a man who does nothing but lick envelopes all day. He used his otherwordly thumbnail again on the edges of the flaps, which were unquestionably sealed by the time he finished with them. The sighs began about half way through writing the address, and the shaking of the hands started up again when he opened up his wallet to take out a little book of stamps, and an air mail sticker. This preparedness made me wonder if he underwent this process every day. Surely its impossible. He would die from the emotional toll- one more letter like that would do him in, I am sure of it.

Once the letter was sealed, stamped and addressed, he moved with speed, perhaps knowing that it was too late to alter things now. In a flash he had put his bag back on his back, stood up, pushed the chair into the table, and tottered out with uneven strides, letter in hand. He paused only to push the two cups together on the table, the cappuccino and the water, as though he had separated them unfairly in their early lives, and was now facilitating a reconciliation. He left so quickly, I didn't even get to think about saying anything to him, although I am not sure what I would have said. I felt like I had just watched something intensely personal, like a birth, a bad breakup, or a reunion after a decade of exile.

It would be impossible to say whether the letter man had been traumatized that afternoon at the Blackwell's cafe, or if he had come to some sort of epiphany. He had smiled, but he had also shaken like a leaf, and drunk off his coffee with the desperation of a man who really wanted something stronger, but is too polite to drink hard liquor before a certain hour of the evening. As for the letter, I'll never know what it said, or who it was for, or what they wrote in response, or what the sugar packets meant. He left me with nothing but the vision of an empty water glass and cappuccino and saucer cup, sitting on an empty cafe table, staring at their reflections in the glossy, fake mahogany finish. The two dishes stood as monuments to the letter writer, the sloping sides of the water glass just barely touching the rounded lip of the saucer, the way that man's consciousness seemed just barely to kiss the reality around him as he wrote.

Scotland

The only photographic proof that I was in the Highlands- I forgot my camera at home this trip, don't worry I've already kicked myself.

Here at last is a slightly belated Scotland post- of course, so much has happened since returning from Scotland on Saturday morning (it is now Tuesday night) that I feel impatient to skip over it and rush on to the more immediate things, but I will be good and force myself to stay in one place long enough to remember that beautiful land- I know I will not regret it.

I arrived in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland with five of the coolest CMRS girls on a very wet Wednesday night. The city was all dark, and enclosed in curtains of rain, but shining forth like a beacon of history was the Edinburgh castle, high up on a tall, rocky crag. The stone walls were lit dramatically from underneath, but the highest ramparts stretched up beyond the reach of the floodlights, out of sight. We found the High Street, and then our little hostel, which was clean, warm and cheap, and therefore more than adequate (we did have some unexpected Portuguese bunk mates... of the male variety... but once we established an insurmountable language barrier, both parties were happy to ignore the other with all due politeness, and it worked out well). In the morning, we set out immediately for the castle, walking past dozens of touristy shops selling tartans and shortbread in kilt-shaped tins. The castle itself was amazing and formidable, and completely covered the hilltop. Even though it was pouring rain, I enjoyed spending the whole morning climbing over every inch of it, imagining what it would be like to live there (main conclusion: cold). Of all the medieval anomalies I witnessed that morning, the most memorable item for me was the old wooden door to the dungeon where they kept American POWs from the Revolutionary War (still unclear why they were being kept there... that was one placard I did not read close enough). The door was covered with really high quality graffiti: names, dates, beloveds, prayers, and even a detailed engraving of a ship bound west were all scratched in with care. I tried to imagine the men who lived there as I heard all about the gruel they ate, and felt the cold and the damp of the sunless dungeons.

The castle also houses Scotland's crown jewels: a rather normal looking crown, and a sword as big as me, and The Stone of Destiny. This last is worth googling if you have the time. As I learned in more detail on our three hour walking tour of the city, the Stone of Destiny has been used as a coronation throne for Scottish royalty since the 9th century. The king does not become king when he receives the sword or the crown, but only when his royal bum touches this neolithic stone. In 1296 King Edward the first of England gained control of Scotland and forcibly took the stone to Westminster where it has remained ever since to be used in English coronations. The Scots abided this injustice and act of English domination until the 1950's when a seedy little law student from Glasglow (Ian Hamilton) got a few buddies together, broke into Westiminster with a crowbar, and stole the stone back in a classic act of patriotism. The full story involves breaking the stone, repairing the stone, losing the keys to his getaway car, shredding his coat, burrying the stone hastily in a British field, coming back for it and making friends with gypsies, and finally, after reviving British patriotism and reminding the bloody English that the stone is really Scotland's, returned it to Westimnster. It is now in Edinburgh "on loan" and will need to be returned for the next English coronation. It was SUCH a good story, and our tour guide was downright fanatical about it. He was top notch in my book, actually, because he was able to talk at length about two of my chief interests: Scottish history, and Harry Potter. He took us to the cafe where JKR wrote the first of the Harry Potter books, and also to a creepy old graveyard where she took some of her characters' names off the tombstones (we saw McGonagall, Tom Riddle Jr and Senior, and also Mad Eye Moody).

The second day was less rainy- we took a little tour bus to the highlands. This part of Scotland is less easy to articulate. The slopes were steep and created tiny, narrow ravines which we drove along, craning our necks to look up the rich brown hills to the tops- so white with snow they disapeared completely in the clouds. Our bus driver was also very excited about history, especially about dispelling the Hollywood myth of Braveheart. Much to the chagrin of the French and Belgian tourists sitting in front of us, he spent the entire four hour drive home performing a dramatic monologue over the loudspeaker about the true history of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce- the real braveheart (Bruce was a national hero who actually requested that his heart be removed from his body and taken on crusade after his death. When the crusading party met an army of Moors that outnumbered them 10 to 1, the small casket with Bruce's heart was hurled ahead into the opposing army just before they clashed in battle, with the accompanying cry, "ride forth, brave heart!" This was about a quarter century after the gruesome murder of the real William Wallace... the bus driver described his English-style traitor's execution with shameless relish and detail). The tour ended at Loch Ness, which is beautiful, but also sad and lonely. I regret to say that although I saw some billy goats climbing the steep slopes, Nessie was too shy to come out. The bus ride home was long, and as I said, infused with a true Scotsman's account of Scotish history. We came back in the dark, and I saw the huge, full moon rising over the highlands. It was supernaturally enormous and bright, and I realized later that it was the equinox moon, but at the time, I was actually afraid that something weird and apocolyptic was going on.

I didn't get to spend nearly enough time in Scotland. I loved the city of Edinburgh, and the highlands were eerily beautiful and old, though I would never want to live there. This weekend my adventures continue with a day trip to Wales (800 year old monastery is on the list!) Hopefully before then I will have time to do a post on how I got myself into trouble with a (highly relevant and illuminating) Harry Potter reference during one of Dr. Crowe's lectures on John Milton. The fun just never stops.

End of Term and Friends in Rennes, France.

I haven't been able to post any updates lately due to the crushing end of term workload here at Oxford, but I have finally come out of the other end of the tunnel. I don't want to mock my academic experience here by inflating it or exaggerating, but that last week I spent working on that seminar paper was probably literally the most taxing week of my career at school. The interesting flip side of this is I know that I was the one who made it so, and not because I had a professor breathing down my neck, or I was really worried about a grade (I have yet to receive a single grade here, their absence is initially troubling, but then you get used to it and they start to become less of an incentive). Although my paper only ended up being 15 pages and 200 words over the suggested word count, in reality I wrote about twice that, and edited it down throughout the week. I chose my own topic, found my own books, and made my own thesis. No help was offered me, and the syllabus was more like a style guide with a big deadline at the bottom - very typical of the Oxford system. This independence was pretty terrifying at first, but as the term went on, I realized that this was my chance to study something I really wanted to study, something that I could actually use in my real life. I decided to write about the classical influence on chivlaric ties of friendship, and how the interaction of these two models might indicate why pure, unadulterated friendship is notoriously difficult to obtain between men and women. I was pleased with my findings- it gave me a lot to think about, and many more questions to stew over, but as with all of my Oxford academic endeavors, I was frustrated by the limitations of a 24 hour day, during which the libraries are only open for 12 hours or less.

This is me, welcoming death or at least a full night of dreamless sleep as I plow through my seminar paper. Note pathetic-ness.

One thing I really do appreciate here at Oxford is the way my tutors encourage learning for the sake of learning. At Olaf, I am frequently charged with defending my proposed topic and explaining why it is useful to study this particular aspect of history... at Oxford, my tutor stopped me almost as soon as I went into justification mode, and asked me what I was actually interested in studying, what is relevant to my life right now? This eventually led to a thesis that not only helped me synthesize everything I'd been reading about all term, but also made me feel like my own personal life was relevant in the grander scheme of history. That all made it worth it for me to stay up to ridiculous hours of the morning finding just the right wording, and just the right evidence to support my points. For the first time ever, I felt like my research was for myself and the friends I would share it with, and not for some higher authority with a red pen.

Even though I decided the research was all mine, the timeline was definitely not my idea, and by the time I got to Wednesday night, I could have slept standing up. I turned my paper in at 7:00pm, and then....slept? blacked out?... on my bed for a few hours, missing dinner. I'd had three consecutive nights of 4 hours of sleep or less, and hadn't gone on a run or played viola (therapeutic) in days. My brother Joe did come to visit me for the week, which had the contrasting effects of cheering me up immensly, and also adding to time constraints. I was very sad to see him leave on Wednesday night, but the sadness was eased by my almost immediate departure to France the next morning at 5:00. I'd been waiting for my France reunion for weeks, so I cheerfully shut my alarm at 4:50 am, took a bus, the underground, a train, a subway, and another train to Rennes, where I practically swooned into Erin Beaton's waiting arms on the train platform.

Later that evening I met Bjorn on the same platform when his train came in. It is so strange to wade through a thick crowd of strangers and then recognize just an elbow or a shoe through a chink in the mass. I enjoyed a second epic platform reunion, and then Bjorn and I made our way secretly to meet Carmen and Erin at a predetermined location- our Thursday arrival in Rennes was a surprise for Carmen's birthday; she thought we were coming on Friday. I was delighted to see her shocked face when we emerged out of the metro, but the happiness of being with my friends again didn't hit me until after our crazy night of birthday revelries on the town. Carmen led us back to her host mother's house late, and put me to bed almost immediately. I suddenly felt very fond of her old habit of mother goosing us, and gladly allowed her to tuck me in. I cannot even tell you how thrilling it was to be horizontal, under a nice blanket, moments away from sleep, in a house full of friends. I could hear Erin brushing her teeth an humming in the bathroom, and Bjorn was stumbling rather impressively through some Debussy on the piano downstairs. Eventually Carmen interrupted him to insist he take a bath- he smelled like hay and (more problematically) cows from his WWOOFing experience on French organic farms. 

Carmen and Bjorn at the piano.

The house was as drafty as all old French houses, and pretty cold outside the blankets, but as I lay there, listening to familiar voices, and music, and footsteps, I felt incredible warmth return to my weary, ink stained fingers, and the most distinct, specific sensation that a warm hand was brushing my forehead in a soothing way, although there was no one else in the room.
 

Our long weekend in Rennes was rejuvenating and educational in its own way. There are many things I hope I won't forget in a hurry: going on long walks through the medieval part of Old Rennes, and seeing the slanting 16th century houses and cobblestones; stopping under every flowered tree that overhung the sidewalk, and inhaling deeply; watching apparent members of a high school boy gang exchange the iconic French greeting, a "bise" I think its called, where they kiss each other on the cheeks; cooking a huge lasagna for the four of us;

Lasagna in the making.

pretending we liked wine and drinking a whole bottle just to prove to ourselves that we are grown ups; multiple trips to the boulangerie across the street; an amazing chocolate store which probably kept the dementors at bay in at least a 300 mile circumference; exchanging stories and pictures and playing chess;
walking through the beautiful and springy "jardin des plantes"; finding a dark window with bars on it, full of little yellow song birds, and wondering how they got to be there, and if they would ever be free. It was pretty idyllic to be able to live under the same roof with some of the truest friends I've got, and cook fabulous meals, and laugh a lot and have no immediate obligations.

Bjorn and Carmen, reluctant to move too much. 

Relaxation was a common motif that weekend....

I know I've alluded to this Moby Dick reference elsewhere on my blog, but the temporariness of our retreat in France made me think of when Ishmael is warm and cozy under the covers, smoking a pipe in utter contentedness with his new cannibal friend Queequeg, and he notes that it would not be nearly as comfortable if he did not have one minute zone of discomfort, such as a cold nose, or a toe that sticks out from the warmth of the blankets. My weekend in France was definitely surrounded by a kind of contrasting discomfort on either side. It is true that the upcoming integral section of my semseter is going to be less academically challenging, but there is never a dull moment while on study abroad, and I am sure as I go forward with my adventures, I will be glad to look back on my time with my friends as a fortifying reminder that there is always something or someone warm and good up ahead on the road, even if you still have a long trek in the rain to get there. Life is all about balance, I guess, and its strange that I should have to come all the way to England to figure that out.

No classes this week at Oxford, so I am off to Scotland. Stories and pictures to follow, I hope!