No no no! I am behind on my blogs. I keep meaning to do one on the ghost tour, part I and II, and another one on tea time (merits entire post to itself). Another experience worth sharing: "writing a tutorial paper at Oxford," sadly the execution of that last distracts me from actually blogging about it. Last night was the most academically stressful night yet. I had been reading and drawing up outlines all day for this paper that was due today: "To what extent was the rise of heresy a product of the Church's attempt to define and enforce orthodoxy (10th - 13th century)?" I am a little sleepy as a result, but the paper is in and, I think it was pretty good (the truth will hit me like a ton of bricks at my session tomorrow, no doubt).
Part of the reason I found the strength to carry on till the wee hours of the morning was because I knew that today was going to be a good day, and indeed it has been. I went and had fabulous tea at breakfast (and toast with honey... and an orange.... and some yogurt of the pink variety), then read a chapter on William the Marshal, who was supposed to be the ideal knight figure. He was a real person too, and the biographical poem about him is the earliest vernacular biography of a lay person! From the early 13th century! Whoa! The chapter I was reading was so good, it was attacking this French historian named Duby who apparently was an incurable idiot when it came to William the Marshal, and some of the zingers in his text were so good I couldn't help laughing out loud in the library, and got reproached by the impish librarian at St. Peter's (get this Carmen, her name is actually Marian. No joke). I went for a run (still no swan man) and ate some lunch, played some viola, read some of the Romance of the Rose, and here I am! ready for teatime. The fact that I have managed to squeeze in a run, some time on the viola, lots of tea, homework and laughing in the library makes it a fabulous day indeed. Days I don't have to write any papers are practically weekends, in fact, but better, because I still end up reading lots instead of feeling obliged to make an appearance at the pub (not bashing pubs, just the fact that you are deemed reclusive if you don't go. Indeed, humanity frequently gives such honorable establishments a bad name).
The more I think about it, the more I realize that today had everything it needed to be perfect. There was nothing left to be desired, not even the bad weather bothered me, it just meant I had an excuse to use my shockingly fashionable black umbrella (with ruffle). Alright, the dense fog is a bit much, and the fact that my heater is broken is a little depressing, and I could whine a little about how little sleep Oxford allows me... but all the little whiny bits make the good bits that much better, like how Ishmael describes being under the warm covers next to his new cannibal friend Queequeg: its no good being totally warm and cozy unless a tiny part of you is sticking out in the cold for contrast, like your nose, or one toe. So with these contrasting bits of discomfort, I really couldn't ask for better conditions for contentedness...and yet, there was more in store for me. When I got back from St. Peter's library and peeked in my little mail slot, I caught a glimpse of two beautiful letters, my address made out in two different, yet instantly recognizable hands. I gasped for joy and fumbled for my mail key, and Dr. Philpott cautiously asked me if I was alright as he passed me on the landing. Mail! glorious mail! Two letters at once is almost too much to handle, especailly when they're from good friends. I read one right away, and am squandering the other for when I've finished all my readings for the night. I passed one of the girls on the stairs (there are 62 between the ground floor and my bedroom) grinning like a maniac, and she was the second person to ask me if I was alright. "Just happyyyyy!!!!!" I said. She probably wanted to hit me, she looked grumpy, sort of like I felt last night 1,000 words into my paper. I would have wanted to hit me too.
So now I have this one unopened letter sitting on my desk, the thought of which forces me to smile, even when I try not to (especailly when I try not to). The other is laying open on my bed after having read it through a few times. I wonder at how such a small, 10 cent envelope can dispel such enormous and engulfing things as loneliness, despair, and exhaustion, and one hasn't even been opened yet. The mere knowledge that I have a letter waiting to open keeps me going, its a little like running a car on fumes. I spend the in between moments thinking about what would be the best time to open it... should I wait until I am in the pits of despair, and horde it? Should I read it just before I go to bed, as a reward for finishing all my homework? Should I save it till Friday when I am going to go get cream tea at the Grand Cafe (see next installment having to do with cream tea, among other varieties). I probably won't be able to last till Friday, although I do love reading letters in public, knowing that everyone around me is secretly jealous.
Letters are so amazingly wonderful. I get so much out of just staring at the handwriting on the fronts, and thinking about my friends or my sister as they sit at their desks in Mellby, or at the familiar table in the library, or on their French provincial couch with small demonic dog close at hand. I always like the way my roommate makes her letter g's. Every one of Julie's g's is like a little wave from the page, and the bedazzles on Guilaine's stationary makes me feel like she's winking up at me from the card in my hand. Bjorn's writing reminds me forcibly of the way he sits up perfectly straight in the library, doing math. It must be the way he's written my address neatly aligned on an imaginary left margin. All of these things set my dimples twitching. You guys are on every inch of the pieces of paper you send me, and the knowledge that your warm hand once moved across the page that I now hold in my hand, thousands of miles away, is like a little miracle for 98 cents (or however much an international stamp goes for these days). Its not just a piece of paper with some writing on it, its really a little piece of someone I miss. I hope I never have a lover as a pen pal. Even if he wrote dull letters, it might do me in just the same.
Reading over this blog again gives me a bad feeling, somehow... it makes me think of a chapter in Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. In this satirical* Christian commentary, the administrative staff in Hell are commenting on one little old lady who seems very humble, but really they are celebrating the fact that they are about to "get" her for their collection of souls in Hell. This old lady's sin, as far as I can remember is that she deludes herself and everyone around her into believing that she is so selfless and low-maintenance because she is all about little joys in life. Like tea, and toast. Since she believes that she is so frugal in her material enjoyments, she develops this sense of entitlement: since she only ever wants a little tea and toast (nothing extravagant) she gets domineering if her toast is burned, or her tea is not just right... after all, why shouldn't she have the best, since her requirements are so reasonable? She comes to take these enjoyments for granted, even though they must, at one time, have caused her as much excitement as my mail does now. This is the sin that is ultimately going to make her eligible for eternal damnation, and I remember that really hitting home when I read it last summer. I have no remarks on the Christian aspect of Lewis' commentary, but it does give one pause: am I deluding myself by getting all excited over a few pieces of mail? If I continue to get mail, will I eventually take it for granted? Will I start to feel entitled to written correspondence rather than blessed by it? Oh! Great Con and books are conspiring to ruin my life again! I can't possibly say, 'no, Zoe, you must revile all letters and be an ascetic, and move to remote regions to prove your devout renouncement of all worldly pleasures, great and small.' I have to take a stance somewhere, Lewis, I'm sorry, and it seems to me that God allowed the now anachronistic postal service to endure, not so that I might get my monthly Boden magazine (how DO I get off that mailing list?) but so that I might get letters from real people and become truly happy because of it. And if I enjoy them too much, then that must be my sin, and I am glad that I am at least aware of it. Maybe awareness is enough to prevent entitlement, disenchantment, and all sorts of other bad things that Lewis mentions. I don't know.
On that same note of banishing the dissonant chords of this blog, please please please don't let this blog guilt trip you into writing post (as they call it here). That's not my intention! Written correspondence is certainly not for everyone, and I appreciate that snail mail is outdated for a reason. I also love emails and telepathy (wink wink Joe). I better go to dinner now, the dinning hall is only open for 45 minutes, for some reason, and I'm already late. If things continue to go my way there will be bread pudding for dessert. With raisins. It happened once, it can happen again!
May the post fairy smile upon your PO boxes, and may you make the most of all of your letters and not look too deeply into philosophical/Christian/theological/satirical commentaries on life! If you stare too long into the philosophical, the philsophical will stare back into you....
With love from Oxford.... Z
* This footnote for Bjorn and other etymology enthusiasts: yesterday, in the middle of a lecture about Thomas More's Utopia, the tutor had the excuse to give us the roots of the word "satire".... it is a word that actually goes back to the Roman's slang word for "salad bowl" In a satire, there are bits of truth that get mixed around, but never really blend with the false parts of the satire, just like random pieces of food in a salad bowl, they never melt together to form a homogeneous food substance. Alright, that is a little sketchy, maybe I'm not getting it all right, but that was what he said anyway, and its pretty cool, you should look into it.
Part of the reason I found the strength to carry on till the wee hours of the morning was because I knew that today was going to be a good day, and indeed it has been. I went and had fabulous tea at breakfast (and toast with honey... and an orange.... and some yogurt of the pink variety), then read a chapter on William the Marshal, who was supposed to be the ideal knight figure. He was a real person too, and the biographical poem about him is the earliest vernacular biography of a lay person! From the early 13th century! Whoa! The chapter I was reading was so good, it was attacking this French historian named Duby who apparently was an incurable idiot when it came to William the Marshal, and some of the zingers in his text were so good I couldn't help laughing out loud in the library, and got reproached by the impish librarian at St. Peter's (get this Carmen, her name is actually Marian. No joke). I went for a run (still no swan man) and ate some lunch, played some viola, read some of the Romance of the Rose, and here I am! ready for teatime. The fact that I have managed to squeeze in a run, some time on the viola, lots of tea, homework and laughing in the library makes it a fabulous day indeed. Days I don't have to write any papers are practically weekends, in fact, but better, because I still end up reading lots instead of feeling obliged to make an appearance at the pub (not bashing pubs, just the fact that you are deemed reclusive if you don't go. Indeed, humanity frequently gives such honorable establishments a bad name).
The more I think about it, the more I realize that today had everything it needed to be perfect. There was nothing left to be desired, not even the bad weather bothered me, it just meant I had an excuse to use my shockingly fashionable black umbrella (with ruffle). Alright, the dense fog is a bit much, and the fact that my heater is broken is a little depressing, and I could whine a little about how little sleep Oxford allows me... but all the little whiny bits make the good bits that much better, like how Ishmael describes being under the warm covers next to his new cannibal friend Queequeg: its no good being totally warm and cozy unless a tiny part of you is sticking out in the cold for contrast, like your nose, or one toe. So with these contrasting bits of discomfort, I really couldn't ask for better conditions for contentedness...and yet, there was more in store for me. When I got back from St. Peter's library and peeked in my little mail slot, I caught a glimpse of two beautiful letters, my address made out in two different, yet instantly recognizable hands. I gasped for joy and fumbled for my mail key, and Dr. Philpott cautiously asked me if I was alright as he passed me on the landing. Mail! glorious mail! Two letters at once is almost too much to handle, especailly when they're from good friends. I read one right away, and am squandering the other for when I've finished all my readings for the night. I passed one of the girls on the stairs (there are 62 between the ground floor and my bedroom) grinning like a maniac, and she was the second person to ask me if I was alright. "Just happyyyyy!!!!!" I said. She probably wanted to hit me, she looked grumpy, sort of like I felt last night 1,000 words into my paper. I would have wanted to hit me too.
So now I have this one unopened letter sitting on my desk, the thought of which forces me to smile, even when I try not to (especailly when I try not to). The other is laying open on my bed after having read it through a few times. I wonder at how such a small, 10 cent envelope can dispel such enormous and engulfing things as loneliness, despair, and exhaustion, and one hasn't even been opened yet. The mere knowledge that I have a letter waiting to open keeps me going, its a little like running a car on fumes. I spend the in between moments thinking about what would be the best time to open it... should I wait until I am in the pits of despair, and horde it? Should I read it just before I go to bed, as a reward for finishing all my homework? Should I save it till Friday when I am going to go get cream tea at the Grand Cafe (see next installment having to do with cream tea, among other varieties). I probably won't be able to last till Friday, although I do love reading letters in public, knowing that everyone around me is secretly jealous.
Letters are so amazingly wonderful. I get so much out of just staring at the handwriting on the fronts, and thinking about my friends or my sister as they sit at their desks in Mellby, or at the familiar table in the library, or on their French provincial couch with small demonic dog close at hand. I always like the way my roommate makes her letter g's. Every one of Julie's g's is like a little wave from the page, and the bedazzles on Guilaine's stationary makes me feel like she's winking up at me from the card in my hand. Bjorn's writing reminds me forcibly of the way he sits up perfectly straight in the library, doing math. It must be the way he's written my address neatly aligned on an imaginary left margin. All of these things set my dimples twitching. You guys are on every inch of the pieces of paper you send me, and the knowledge that your warm hand once moved across the page that I now hold in my hand, thousands of miles away, is like a little miracle for 98 cents (or however much an international stamp goes for these days). Its not just a piece of paper with some writing on it, its really a little piece of someone I miss. I hope I never have a lover as a pen pal. Even if he wrote dull letters, it might do me in just the same.
Reading over this blog again gives me a bad feeling, somehow... it makes me think of a chapter in Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. In this satirical* Christian commentary, the administrative staff in Hell are commenting on one little old lady who seems very humble, but really they are celebrating the fact that they are about to "get" her for their collection of souls in Hell. This old lady's sin, as far as I can remember is that she deludes herself and everyone around her into believing that she is so selfless and low-maintenance because she is all about little joys in life. Like tea, and toast. Since she believes that she is so frugal in her material enjoyments, she develops this sense of entitlement: since she only ever wants a little tea and toast (nothing extravagant) she gets domineering if her toast is burned, or her tea is not just right... after all, why shouldn't she have the best, since her requirements are so reasonable? She comes to take these enjoyments for granted, even though they must, at one time, have caused her as much excitement as my mail does now. This is the sin that is ultimately going to make her eligible for eternal damnation, and I remember that really hitting home when I read it last summer. I have no remarks on the Christian aspect of Lewis' commentary, but it does give one pause: am I deluding myself by getting all excited over a few pieces of mail? If I continue to get mail, will I eventually take it for granted? Will I start to feel entitled to written correspondence rather than blessed by it? Oh! Great Con and books are conspiring to ruin my life again! I can't possibly say, 'no, Zoe, you must revile all letters and be an ascetic, and move to remote regions to prove your devout renouncement of all worldly pleasures, great and small.' I have to take a stance somewhere, Lewis, I'm sorry, and it seems to me that God allowed the now anachronistic postal service to endure, not so that I might get my monthly Boden magazine (how DO I get off that mailing list?) but so that I might get letters from real people and become truly happy because of it. And if I enjoy them too much, then that must be my sin, and I am glad that I am at least aware of it. Maybe awareness is enough to prevent entitlement, disenchantment, and all sorts of other bad things that Lewis mentions. I don't know.
On that same note of banishing the dissonant chords of this blog, please please please don't let this blog guilt trip you into writing post (as they call it here). That's not my intention! Written correspondence is certainly not for everyone, and I appreciate that snail mail is outdated for a reason. I also love emails and telepathy (wink wink Joe). I better go to dinner now, the dinning hall is only open for 45 minutes, for some reason, and I'm already late. If things continue to go my way there will be bread pudding for dessert. With raisins. It happened once, it can happen again!
May the post fairy smile upon your PO boxes, and may you make the most of all of your letters and not look too deeply into philosophical/Christian/theological/satirical commentaries on life! If you stare too long into the philosophical, the philsophical will stare back into you....
With love from Oxford.... Z
* This footnote for Bjorn and other etymology enthusiasts: yesterday, in the middle of a lecture about Thomas More's Utopia, the tutor had the excuse to give us the roots of the word "satire".... it is a word that actually goes back to the Roman's slang word for "salad bowl" In a satire, there are bits of truth that get mixed around, but never really blend with the false parts of the satire, just like random pieces of food in a salad bowl, they never melt together to form a homogeneous food substance. Alright, that is a little sketchy, maybe I'm not getting it all right, but that was what he said anyway, and its pretty cool, you should look into it.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAs quoted from the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, the etymology is as follows:
ReplyDelete"Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin 'satura', 'satira', perhaps from '(lanx) satura' dish of mixed ingredients, from feminine of 'satur' well-fed; akin to Latin 'satis' enough"
That's fascinating. I love weird etymologies like that.