"I had almost found my face, I was almost me, but my pride couldn't swallow what it ate, boy I hope you're happy"

Break has been going by obscenely fast; it's rather frightening. I keep telling myself to just relax & enjoy it, after all, I still have three weeks until I head back to Oxford. But then I think well, I've already been home for two, and have done barely anything. Slept an absurd amount. Had my annual Christmas cookie bakathon with the Holland Hill girls. Watched most of the first season of Felicity on DVD and various Christmas specials. Went up to Sarah Lawrence last weekend, which was bittersweet & strangely unsatisfactory. Went over to Cari's. Had lunch with Chelsea. Visited old high school teachers. Got snowed in, for the first time in a long time. I didn't even remember how to drive in the snow, it's been so long. Maybe I've done more than I think I have. What I have not done, however, is work. Went to the library & checked out a pile of books last week, and I just haven't been able to read more than a few pages. My motivation is still shot after last term. The last thing I want to do right now is read. Anything at all. After Christmas, I keep saying. I don't really have a choice.

Roo was talking today about how she'll be spending her senior year in LA, and then moving out there. Holy shit, I thought. It's all going by so fast. I don't feel ready, even if I am. Apartments and jobs and grad school and relocating and all the rest. Where did the years go?

home for christmas.

Home, finally. Got into JFK earlier than expected last night, after traveling for over 15 hours, though it took me another three hours to get to Fairfield, and I pretty much dragged my stuff into my room & crashed. The flight was calm overall, though I had a major panic attack right before we took off, and started crying & hyperventilating. The guy across the aisle from me flagged down a stewardess, who came over, talked me down, got me a pillow from first class, and a free bottle of wine--which was lovely, though I didn't take more than a few sips, fearing that mixing alcohol & Xanax couldn't be good, though, once again, the Xanax did nothing. I absolutely need to figure out some way to not be so terrified. I have another two flights back & forth from Oxford, and then all the traveling Amy & I will be doing over spring break. I can't go through life being this scared.


I keep delaying unpacking. It's always such a pain in the ass. Though I will start that momentarily. And once that is done, perhaps bake cookies & watch something in front of my Christmas tree. Being home is strange. Everything, of course, is so familiar but I feel like I'm seeing it--and myself--with entirely new eyes.

To shamelessly quote Gossip Girl:

"When I was young, Bukowski put a shot glass on my head and blew it off with a pistol. Find your Bukowski."

Hah.


I think I just thought this would be easier than it actually is. The fantasy & the reality haven't quite conflated, that's all. Give it time, right? Maybe. Maybe it is still early.

Besides, even with the fantasy there are problems. I want to be so in love with this place & these people that leaving in June will break my heart. I want long-standing friendships and trans-atlantic packages, inside jokes & cute boy love-affairs. I want what I idealized, and maybe some of that I will get and maybe some of it I won't, and maybe some of it I already have.

These last few weeks have turned me into an insomniac. Re-visiting a normal sleeping schedule. Add that to the list of things to do over break.

Maybe, as Amy would say, I'm just being fussy.

But there's only so much time, you know?

Maybe my problem is that I'm always looking for something.

And that's enough introspection for now.

"they say time changes things, but actually you have to change them yourself"

Switched my flight from the 12th of December to the 8th; as much as I love Oxford, I'm ready to go home for a while. I'm at that point in the year where you start to burn out, the exhaustion alternately making everything seem a lot worse--or, and this is always the preferred result--you can't seem to care about much at all. I'm dragging myself through these last few assignments. It is definitely time for a break.

The notebook came today, which was a wonderful post-Thanksgiving surprise, though it wasn't a surprise so much, since I knew it was coming, but still. I had this idea this past summer to start a scrapbook/journal to keep the Gilbert Girls (the Sarah Lawrence loves of my life, plus a few equally treasured honorary members) consistently in touch over the coming school year, since Amy & I would be in Oxford, Marty was up at Smith, Eunice & Joanna still at Sarah Lawrence. Over these almost six months we've filled it with postcards & photographs & bits of writing, bookmarks & magazine clippings & favorite quotes. It's become a record of our lives, together when apart. The last time I wrote in it was August 26th. My brother had just left for school, leaving me to wile away almost a month at home. I was worrying about my mother, how she would do on her own, me in Oxford, Justin in Beijing. My internship was almost over & it was my last day at Children's Place, a fact I was celebrating. Things with Alan & Kira had just imploded, Joanna Ferrell's 21st birthday party had been a week or so before, and I was ready to take Oxford as it came. And now it's six months later. I'm living--and thriving--in a new country, more or less on my own. I've met wonderful new people & gotten closer to the old. I'm learning how to think differently & how to write differently. On the surface, perhaps not much has changed. But I can't help but think, at the end of this experience, I will only be the better for it.

"I am learning to be happy."--Eunice.

Aren't we all.

"I can't remember the last thing you said as you were leaving, now the days go by so fast."

Thanksgiving was rather eventful, with Amy getting sick & Emma's wallet getting stolen & Katie maybe leaving, but all's well that end's well, right? We had our flat, and the flat next door, as well as Alex's friend Holly, Fayyaz & Manaka, more than enough food & wine, and a generally good evening. I missed being at home with my mother & brother, more so after I got off the phone with them, but I'm glad I was able to spend the day with a large group of my nearest & dearest.

Now, I just have to finish reading critical theory on D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow, write essay on said novel & do all of my fiction assignments, and then I am done for this term, thank god. I don't think I could manage another week. I am ready for Christmas & home. I just need to dig up some motivation. All I really want to do is sleep. And watch The Royal Tennebaums / Best In Show. Soon enough, I suppose.

"If everything I meant to you you can lick & seal & fold in two then I've been so blind"

It is almost 3 in the morning & I am entirely awake. Why, I do not know.

It is never me. You'll go for anyone else, and I know, because you'll tell me about it later. But I can't figure out why you won't go for me. Or how you can possibly be so oblivious. It shouldn't matter, in any event. It really shouldn't matter. There's no more time left even if it did.

File under things not to care about when you're on the other side of the Atlantic.


Jeff wins major brownie points for killing the daddy long legs crawling up my wall as I hid my face in my robe and squeaked.

That is all.

The entanglement of the present with the past.

I think the inherent problem is that I'm writing a story I no longer want to be writing. It's not the story I'm still interested in telling, but rather, the one I was interested in telling at seventeen. True, the themes are ones which I probably will always be preoccupied with--familial relationships; rebellion vs. convention; what it means to be an artist/how you achieve that. Responsibility, sexuality, various emotional traumas. But the plot is veering off in two different directions, I don't feel particuarly connected to any of the main characters, and Aria, the protagonist, has become some odd version of who I used to be, and who I thought I wanted to be.

And yet my fiction tutor insists it is dangerous to just drop a piece. Advice which I foresee myself ignoring. If I am not in love with my story I've already given it a death sentence.

So tomorrow will be spent perusing photographs for inspiration, and just generally writing, since I did not get around to it today, what with sleeping later than I thought I would, thanks to a rather heartbreaking middle of the night conversation with my mother, then spending three hours searching through various city centre shops for an appropriate Queer Bop costume, then finishing Mrs. Dalloway & plowing through some critical theory. Of course, after the whole search, the only thing I ended up buying in town for my costume was a tiara. I have decided to be some version of a doll, making use of a pink silk /black lace slip I own from Victoria's Secret, nylons, and heels. Hair will be in pigtails, with doll-appropriate make up. I am envisioning something along the lines of Victorian plaything meets Lolita fantasy. Though perhaps the two are not that different.

I feel like it may have been a mistake to try a longer piece right off the bat. I want to play around with different characters instead. In any case, I desperately need to redeem myself this week.

"Take it all back, take your first, your last, your only. Take it back, take it all back, everything you showed me."

Dizzy by Jimmy Eat World has been running through my head all day. It's my get up & go song. Reminds me of things I need to let go.

I should a) be reading Mrs. Dalloway or b) sleeping. Instead, I am writing in here. Go figure. However, I am quite happy to be reading Virginia Woolf this week. I adore her & if I had the time, would read as much criticism and biographical essays on her & Bloomsbury & the writer's life, not to mention delve into her letters & journals. There are some writers I just get carried away with, like that. The same goes for Sylvia Plath. And for the whole American expatriate scene of the Left Bank in the '20's. I am completely enamored with that particular moment in literary history.

Moving on.

So I was expecting to get ripped to shreds in my literature tutorial today, after writing what I thought was a totally shit essay on Eliot & The Waste Land. Surprisingly, that did not happen. I crunched all my work into one less day, knowing I'd be in London all day Saturday. Which was excellent & a very much needed outing. Amy, Alex & I took the train in, hit up Camden Market, where I purchased two cute scarves and another newsboy cap, and Amy got to haggle for me, which she enjoyed. Met Alex's friend Anna for lunch, who was incredibly sweet, and the four of us wiled away an hour at a hole in the wall coffee shop. Let me just say, rose-flavored hot chocolate only makes your day better. Afterwards, Anna said goodbye & the three of us proceeded to walk to Bloomsbury. Alex & I had decided we wanted a literary day, perusing used book stores, and Dicken's house & the like. We ended up wandering through a few bookshops & a comic book store, and I picked up a lovely black beret from a shop Amy remembered having gone to with her sister a few years ago. Alex informed me I looked like a little French schoolgirl, with my red trench coat, dark hair & black beret. We didn't make it to Dicken's house, but we did spend an hour wandering through the British Museum, mainly checking out the mummy exhibits. I kept waiting for Rachel Weisz to pop out from behind a corner. I definitely will be spending more time in Bloomsbury. We left London earlier than initially planned, to make it back for the Sarah Lawrence/Wadham potluck, which was exactly what it promised to be--low key, friends, food, wine. A good weekend, all around.

Got torn apart in my fiction tutorial Monday; that was decidedly less good. Had hit the wall as far as work went last week, and have yet to figure out the balance I need to. Had an hour long phone conversation with my mother about this last night, after recovering from my initial panic attack that went something along the lines of, "Clearly, I suck, and if I don't figure out this balance now, I never will, and I will never write as well as I'm capable of writing, and I will never get into a good MFA program, and I will never have the career that I want." This is how I think. Those of you that know me, are probably more than acquainted with my particular brand of logic. It is a problem though. Balancing the academic & the creative, the disicplined & the introspective. Especially on the tutorial system, where there just isn't any time. I would love to sit in parks & wander in museums & go through photography books for inspiration. I am in complete agreement that those are activities which are vital for any writer's development. I mean, the one thing Rachel had to criticise me on freshman year, was I worked too much, and should spend more time just wandering and exploring and developing my tastes. I did more of that last year, and was happier for it. I had to let some things slide to manage it, but I worked out overall. Here, I don't see how I can do that. Over winter break, I have every intention of writing all the time, and salvaging the last two terms from the wreckage of this one. I will have large spans of days in which to accomplish this, and, god willing, no other pressing concerns. How do you find a balance here though? I don't know. I've never been good at that in general. I want that arty, free-spirited, introspective existence. I really do. But, I am divided because I also love literature, thinking critically, certain aspects of academia. Obviously, this is not an issue that is going to be resolved over night. But it is something that has been on my mind definitely for the past two years, and even more so at Oxford.

I don't want to be "flat & stereotypical;" I don't want to write pieces that are rushed, just because I don't have the time to linger over them. I feel horrible about myself when I do; like I'm just wasting time. It's bad enough I feel that way about at least two or three weeks of my fiction tutorial. I guess I have to think of this as a learning experience, and let it go. I'm trying.

However, in an ironic little contrast to my "I will never be a writer" crisis of faith, I had a poem published in the latest issue of Isis & I was selected to be the Editorial Assistant to the Fiction Department of the Oxonian Review of Books. Both good things; both will look good on a resume, and both were unexpected. Things to be happy about.

I love my flatmates; I really do feel like we're a little family now. I love my friends. On good days, I enjoy my tutorials. At the very least, I'm happy about reading Virginia Woolf & D.H. Lawrence, and once I get my head screwed on straight about this fiction thing, I'll enjoy that as well again. And if Fayyaz & Fern are successful in their hunt for me, that would be the icing on the cake. Things to look forward to on the horizon: Blenheim Palace/Christmas Fair on Friday; Queer Bop on Saturday (a Wadham-hosted dance, one of the craziest of whole year, apparently. For you Sarah Lawrence people, think Coming Out Ball times ten). I think I will make use of my pink corset. Perhaps a sexy faerie costume is in order? Come hither corset juxtaposed with pretty, frilly, lacy skirt? Wild hair & lots of lipgloss? Not to mention, total inebriation? I had better be, if I'm going to be frolicking around Wadham Garden in next to nothing, in sub zero temperatures. Ideally, I will have a bottle of Pinot Grigio & a cute boy to warm me.

Also: Amy's dinner party; Sarah Lawrence Thanksgiving dinner in Hall; our own Thanksgiving dinner with flat across the hall; the end of term in two weeks; planning exciting day trips for ninth week. London for Christmas-y things is a given; Scotland might also be in order.

Saw Shimon Peres lecture at the Sheldonian tonight. Nothing spectacular, though he had some lovely rhetoric about peace. He also, unsurprisingly, dodged direct, more unflattering questions. Also, had trouble understanding what he was saying, his accent was so thick & the protestors were screaming outside, Amy along with them. Outside protests, totally in order. People disrupting the lecture itself, inside the theater, a little less appropriate. I just enjoyed watching the insane amount of Secret Service & Mossad agents have a connipition everytime someone moved.

Mrs. Dalloway, I feel, will be finished tomorrow morning. My schedule is already off track. Ah, well. What can you do?

"When I count there are only you and I together"

It is one of those weeks. But this will pass.

As it is Oxford, there are always things to brighten the day. Tea with friends, leisurely & ridiculous conversations, poetry readings, planning future excursions.

Mainly it is rainy & I am tired & have a cold & Eliot, despite the reading of innumerable essays, is still rather incomprehensible to me. Or, more to the point, I just don't have the wherewithal at the moment to care as much as I should. Fifth week blues. The constant writing is getting to me. It's like running a marathon, they say. You just keep going.

Today all I wanted to do was nap. I didn't of course; contented myself with large cups of chai tea (I miss my chai mix from home; things to bring back with me) and looking cute. Looking cute helps when it is miserable out, I have found. Also, took shortcuts on my fiction writing, as I was crunched for time. Not good, not good. I'm turning the best parts of my old work into an odd fictional mosaic. It sounds ok but doesn't feel right. Maybe Sunday I will fix this. Saturday is London all day. Maybe I just need a change of scenery.

I am beginning to formulate lofty goals for winter break, aside from the lounging in front of my Christmas tree & reading & baking & visiting friends. I will write, write, write (fiction) all the time, so I will actually have a cohesive sense of what I want to do when I come back in January. I will consider this term an excercise in disiciplined writing & leave it at that. I need more of a balance. Literature cannot dominate my academic life. I'll be screwed for my senior thesis; for graduate school. I've got to churn out something good. And soon. Winter break then. Every day, I'll write.

I am itching for a change again. Wasted time browsing vintage clothing websites--a favorite pasttime of mine. Arty fashion blogs, arty sex blogs, I'm enamored of things of those sort. There's a woman who sells gorgeous fifties style polka dot dresses with wide, swinging skirts and narrow waists; halter dresses & satin concoctions. I am determined to own one in the foreseeable future. I like pretty, fanciful things. Lace slips & suede boots. Party dresses & fishnet. I need to get my hair trimmed, and then either chop it off or grow it out long, long, long again. Shorter would make me look older, but I miss the down-to-my-waist hair. Maybe. I am undecided. These are the things I think about when I can't possibly stand to read any more Eliot. I dreamt last night he was trying to kill me, Eliot, and even though I knew this, I was still hoping he might explain his poetry to me. Make of that what you will.

Hair dye. It's time for it to be dark red again.


Home is close & yet it seems a long way away. The past infuriatingly reared its ugly little head & there was nothing for me to do but walk away. Too late. It's always too late for these kinds of things. There I go waxing vague again. Sometimes I can't remember myself at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, even if I try. There were too many incomprehensible decisions made. What did I know? Not enough, that's for sure. No, people don't change. Not like that. You don't get more chances after things like that.

Bed. Tomorrow: essay writing (I am going to take the stance of 'it is what it is' and move on); London-planning, Quantum of Solace seeing. Oh Daniel Craig. I do love men with an edge.

"Those people are speaking Welsh and I want to listen!"

It's been a while since I last updated, as Jeff has informed me. Lame, I know. But this is what has happened in the interim:

Gabe came down from London last Sunday to visit me, which was lovely. I hadn't seen him since his Harlem rooftop going-away party in August, so we spent some time catching up whilst wandering around Oxford. I met him at the train station, we grabbed a bite to eat on Broad Street, then I gave him a quick tour of Wadham, before using his presence as an excuse to explore a few of the sites I have yet to see, namely Magdalen College, with a quick stopover at New, so I could show him the cloisters where Harry Potter was filmed. Because, I mean, some things you just have to do.

Magdalen deer park was beautiful. The foilage has changed as much as it ever will over here, it was cloudy but had stopped raining, and wasn't terribly cold either--all somewhat rare occurrences as it heads into the English winter--so it was perfect for a long walk. And so we did, for about two hours, until the cold finally set in, and I took Gabe home to meet my flatmates. The six of us went out to dinner in Summertown, and then I called Gabe a cab, since we both had work to finish. He promised to give me a tour of London sometime soon--take me to this covered marketplace which is supposed to be massive and bohemian and gothy--all the things I love, right? In any case it was wonderful to see him. He mentioned that he was having trouble adjusting, or at the very least, meeting other British students (he's the youngest at his school, which contributes to the problem, since the art students are at least five years older) and that he was glad to see a familiar face. In that same vein, I'm thankful that the transition has been much easier for us, in no small part, I think, because of where we're living and our efforts at being pro-active about going out & meeting people.

Monday was Lottie's birthday tea-party, which was adorable. I brought flowers for her, we wore cute dresses, and drank tea on her dorm room floor. We also met a girl who lives in the flat above us, as well as a boy, James, who lives across the street from us on Banbury Road, with 6 other Oxford students, and a number of Williams students here on exchange. Hopefully there will be ample opportunity for hanging out, then.

Tuesday was, as mentioned in my last blog post, the election. Sheer marvelous chaos. Lots of hugging, screaming, crying, laughing, and a few drunken Americans singing the Star Spangled Banner ad nauseum. Got asked out for drinks by a Georgetown boy admist all the craziness, and got my ass grabbed--twice--by a guy who was a little too exuberant and/or drunk. Amy stared him down. I stood there like a moron. After he went for me again, Amy lost it on him, then lost it on me. "Have I taught you nothing in the past three years?" she asked. "You need to learn to speak up." And she was right, of course. You'd think I would have gotten that by now.

Slept until 3 Wednesday afternoon, after staying up until 630, and everything felt a bit surreal--but happily so. Like after a particuarly good dream. Sarah Lawrence went nuts, of course, and so did New York City. I would have liked to have been there to see it, as memorable as being at the Union was. Also jealous Rahm Emmaunel will be SLC's commencement speaker, which I will miss. But that is neither here nor there.

Thursday we (Amy, Alex, Jeff and I) went to the student production of A Few Good Men at the Oxford Playhouse, which was well done, though Jeff has insisted I need to see the film to truly compare. Friday the Sarah Lawrence Programme took us to Wales for the day, to the ruins of a medieval abbey, and an open air museum (think a combination between Williamsburg and an furniture gallery exhibit at the Met). The weather was perfect for it, we romped around through a decidely Tolkien-esque forest, took loads of pictures, and fell asleep on the bus. Our flat and the Sarah Lawrence flat next door made dinner together, and then I set about reading Ezra Pound's 30 Cantos in, oh, an hour and a half. Which is just not at all what you are supposed to do, but I didn't have the time to do it any other way. The actual criticism took long enough, being as it was all economic theory, which I understood almost none of. Nonetheless, I banged out a paper which is hopefully halfway decent, and at least this week I have The Wasteland to look forward to. Nothing can be as bad as Pound.

Next term I want to continue studying Modernism, but really hand pick the authors I read. I should probably branch out from the American Expatriate scene of the Left Bank in the 20's of which I'm so enamored, but there are so many of them I haven't read.

Went to chapel with Amy and Alex yesterday for Remembrance Sunday; the first time I've been to any kind of service since my grandparents passed away, and before that, it was years. The chapel was packed, the service was typically Wadhamesque--an interesting female pastor who rather upended the way one might traditionally think about the day--and the music was beautiful. You could hear the wind outside, and the rain was coming down furiously. You could almost forget the reason you were actually supposed to be there, it was so cinematic. Afterwards we went out for mulled wine at the Turf with some students in the choir. Looking around, I could only think, "this is exactly what I thought coming here would be like."

This week promises to be a little less insane. Saturday will be London--we're planning on having a literary day. Hitting Bloomsbury and all that.

The next entry will not be quite so prosaic. Promise.

History.

It is now 5:30 in the morning, and I have stayed up all night watching history get made. I will never forget this moment. The Oxford Union was packed, people were hugging each other and weeping and laughing and cheering and singing. I cried too. I will never forget this moment. The beginning of something. It feels like the beginning of everything.

white is not surrender, despite what you've been told.

No amount of coffee, no amount of crying, no amount of whiskey, no amount of wine, no nothing else will do, i've gotta have you.

Last.fm makes me happy.

Carved pumpkins with the flatmates tonight--third year running Amy and I have done this. A Sarah Lawrence tradition, now. "Even in thirty years," she said. "We'll still do this." It was cute. More flatmate bonding. My mother sent me Halloween decorations last year--a taste of home, from the years Justin, my mother and I would go all out decorating. Cars and passerby would stop on the street to take pictures. We turned our front lawn into a graveyard, hung ghosts from the trees, littered the lawn with skeleton bones, laced spiderweb over our railings, painted pumpkins on the steps. When I got a bit older, Roo and the girls would come and help. I remember freezing outside in hoodies and jeans, that leaf-burning smell in the air. It always seemed like it was cloudy. Perfect New Englandness.


Freshman year at Sarah Lawrence, my wonderful neighbor had sent me a care package of Halloween candy and garlands and the like. Marty, Amy, Eunice & I descended on the Gilbert kitchen--a term I use rather loosely--with the pumpkins we had procured, and dived into them with steak knives, pop music blaring in the background. We stuck them on the windowsills facing the North Lawn, with flashlights inside, until they finally rotted a few weeks later and the cleaning ladies got rid of them. I dressed up as Snow White that year, because that was my nickname anyway. The pale, pale skin, and my long black hair almost down to my waist. Wednesday Addams was Marty's other favorite nickname for me, but Snow White made the better costume. Sara, Victoria & I went trick or treating through Bronxville. Last year, Amy came over to AC 12, cooked a fantastic dinner, and we carved a pumpkin into a squirrel. It was amazing. AC 12 in general was pretty fabulous, but that night was especially good. We went trick or treating again last year--me, Amy, Joanna, Eunice at the end. The memories are so clear, but right now they feel like a different world.


Friday Amy & I will go on a ghost tour of Oxford, then hit up a pub crawl. The Iffley flats are having their own Halloween house party Saturday night which we'll all go to. I think I'll end up going as some Moulin Rouge type thing. Ransack my closet for my best corset, my petticoat skirt I always get compliments on. Something simple like that.


Went to the Bodleian to work today with Alex. Sometimes I really can't believe this is where I go to school, these are the places I get to study in. It just doesn't get old. And there's so much to see & do. None of us have even scratched the surface.

"i'm telling you from where i sit you're one of a kind"

I've been listening to Griffin House a lot. Thanks Amy for that new musical obsession. That, and Sugarland's "Very Last Country Song." What can I say? It's been running through my head. If life stayed the way that it was & lovers never fell out of love, if memories didn't last so long, if nobody did nobody wrong, if we knew what we had before it was gone, if every road led back home...

This evening it started snowing briefly, for the very first time this year. It's rather a mess out now, but we all ran outside for a minute, stood there shivering in sweatshirts and boots and blankets. It was bright and sunny this morning. Spent five hours in the Oxford IT getting my laptop de-virused, and emerge into the rain. English weather. Still, walking through the parks this morning was beautiful. And after my fiction tutorial, I actually felt excited to sit down and write. I haven't yet, but at least now I have a better sense of what I need to do.

Also discovered the marvelous fact that Oxford does indeed have a Masters program in creative writing. Absurdly competitive--only 14 slots and about 150 applicants--but in a lovely twist of fate, my literature tutor is the Director of it. I actually might be able to come back here, work, write, live. I really might be able to.

Like any place, the initial euphoria has worn off a bit--New York was always the same way for me after a while--but I'm more in love with this city than I've been with anywhere else. It's cosmopolitan& suburban, academic & arty, comfortable & surprising. At the very least, that sense of calm I felt on arriving almost a month ago has yet to evaporate. That's never happened to me before.

"Just be," Amy keeps telling me. "That's all you can do." It's hard not to look at her and want what she has--if only because she's integrating more easily, and I keep trying to do just that. Perhaps I shouldn't have arrived with any sort of expectations, but after last year/this past summer, I needed to have some & I needed to get away. Coming here was probably the best thing I could have done for myself.

Marty, written to me: "you are beautiful. you are smart. you have an amazing career ahead of you. please, please do not settle for someone who is not worthy of your affections. you are at a whole different level than all the men you've ever been with...i am half inclined to start a committee to approve michelle's male interests! (in that case, you should meet some of my fairfield friends--they would love to assist you)...things tend to jump up and bite you in the ass a lot of the time. so chin up! i love you, and i don't love everybody. go live your life!"

This is why we have best friends. To remind us of these things.

Tonight, I am going to watch Harry Potter, I think. It is that kind of night.

freewrite.

"Figure out your views on writing, your views on life," I was told by my writing tutor last week. "They may not be what you expect."

***

I believe in all the cliches---love, beauty, truth--or rather, I want to believe in them. I want to believe in karma, but I've never seen it work to my advantage. I like to play myself off as a cynic, but I'm still ever the optimist at heart. I want everything, and worry I will get none of it. I don't believe in God, except when it's convenient. I don't buy religious rationales for all the horrible things that happen in the world. I try to live my life like its artful, immersing myself in academics and other intellectual pursuits, but I wonder if I wouldn't give it all up for the chance to be truly happy. But I'm basing my idea of happiness on a fantasy because I've never had the kind of relationship I'm looking for. I play out my own neuroses in my writing even as I play them out in my own life--or can't play them out, as it were. I don't know if I have what it takes, if my discipline is up to snuff. Maybe I've coasted for too long.

Because I can't be in person all the things I want to be. Because I can't say what I want to say, so I have other people say them. Because I don't know that I'll be able to live the lives I want. So does that make writing a selfish pursuit? Perhaps. I want to change the world, but to my own liking. I fight for the issues that affect me personally--or have affected--because I never give myself time to mourn anything. I am always looking forward, can never stay in the moment. Plans, plans, plans. "You are not happy." Maybe. Would I really trade it all for convention? My mother did the opposite. But I at least want the chance to fuck it all up. I take up fights that concern me because I want someone to say yes I understand. Why did I write that memoir? Because I needed people to know. Because I couldn't keep it all inside. Because I needed to know who else had had that experience. But no. More than that, I needed lots of people to say "it was not your fault." I needed lots of people to tell me I was strong, to be horrified, to be enraged--to have all the reactions I couldn't/didn't have--from myself or from the people I needed to have had them. Selfish vs. altruistic. Afraid I don't have any original ideas, so I just pop out what sounds good. What will it take for me to get excited?

Obsessions--male relationships. I keep returning to/writing the same ones. Trauma. Female relationships. Why do you do what you do? Beauty/aesthetic. I never slow down, and so do I really experience anything? When I melt, I don't write about it. Do I write the things that matter or the ones that don't? I am afraid to be told "you are not that good." Idealization vs. reality. Sex. Fantasy.

I don't write about happy families.

What rules do you follow? Don't you follow? What do I believe. Convictions. I need to have some more. Be angry. Be raw. Speak your mind.

I cried when I read that memoir in class. Visceral reactions. But I wrote it impassively. My best work has always been in one fell swoop.

"You like to turn things into a story, do you?"

I am more honest with total strangers than I am with you.

This is what I believe. There is no rhyme or reason but what we make ourselves. You create your own justifications.

I like my options. I am afraid of being tied down. Ergo, so are my characters.

I am too transparent.

I worry about dying young. About dying. About my mother, brother, father.

I treat sex like a game I know how to play but have to yet master the rules.

My mother always asked me "what's going on in that pretty little head of yours?" Things which I think but never say. If I say them outloud, that is worse, because the possibility of being rejected outloud would be worse than me not saying it at all.

I still think you and I could have/ should have ended up on an entirely different path. I wanted to kiss you before I left--before you left, that afternoon--but I didn't. I didn't want to risk it all getting screwed up all over again.

I use my characters to try on different persona's, different lives, but it's never that simple.

"So in love with your writing"--is it or is it not the same as me?


What I should tell Linda tomorrow: "I have to start something new. But where/how do I begin? I have trouble thinking of ideas. I used to use photographs. I need some way to feel inspired. I don't want to keep writing the same old thing. Because I think I'm better than what I've been doing. It just takes time to get there again."

"I don't want to come to you tonight"

"It doesn't get easier to tell the truth. It always gets harder. The deeper you go the harder it gets."

Maybe I'm just kidding myself here.


"It's still early," Jessie reminded me. "Don't fret."
I try.

"I used to think of it as a plate glass window just begging for a brick"

Joined the Oxford Poetry Society this evening. Was very much like Dead Poets Society, albeit not in a cave and with British accents. But, like Dead Poets Society, completely male dominated. And I realize, coming after my last entry, this makes me sound like one-track feminist. But I wasn't the only one to comment on that fact. I mean the entire reading was made up of male Oxford students--specifically, attractive, swaggering, slightly pretentious male Oxford students, with varying degrees of talent. But nonetheless. Where are all the girl poets? And perhaps not surprisingly, sticking to strict verse seems quite popular, along with overtly religious themes & odes to lost love. It made me miss Tina's class. Give me some Sirens & Outlaws, please. Well, now that I have joined, it would be ridiculous for me to just sit back, mouth off, and not do anything. I want to inject some Sharon Olds-style life into this thing. Be rebellious, make people take notice. Though given my oftentimes lack of assertiveness, that could be easier said than done. But I at least want to try.


***

So, at the suggestion of my darling flatmate Jeff, who reads this blog, and was mildly dismayed no one would know who he was, here's a brief introduction to my flat. You have me, obviously, then Amy, who I'm so happy I'm living with. Apparently some of the girls back home have bets going on how long it will be until we kill each other, but quite honestly, it's working out perfectly. Last night over drinks (seriously, do we do anything else?) we both commented on how grateful we were to be sharing this experience with our best friend; how wonderful it is to go out and have adventures but to still know you have a built in security net. Anyway. Then there is Alex, from Wesleyan, who I totally adore. She's incredibly smart, cute, and does wicked imitations of her crazy tutors. The three of us spend a lot of time together, which I love. Jeff is from Swarthmore, and also quite smart and very charming, not to mention an excellent cook and an avid golf player, on the Oxford team no less. He lives next door to me. We all love him. Finally, we have Mark, from Reid. Mark is an anomaly. I have yet to really figure him out. But anomalies can be a good thing.

Kind of like the monkey head we found at the bus stop this morning. Anomalies. It keeps things interesting.

Now to go finish Dracula. Enough with this procrastinating. Indeed.

"That quiet voice, it's rising up again"

It has been one of those days. Even at Oxford I guess you're bound to have them.

It was just so fucking frustrating to hear that even at Oxford--especially at Oxford--this place that is supposed to be (or at least, I have fashioned it to be) this liberal, intellectual, spirited haven--even here, they have all the same problems Sarah Lawrence did/does, and maybe more. Listening to the girls at WomCam talk today (Women's Campaign--Oxford's feminist society) it was all I could do not to burst into tears. I spent two years fighting that battle. Yes, I learned how to do it--how you do (and don't) navigate administration, how you get information out, what information there is to get out. I know how to fight that battle. But do I even want to? Again? I was honestly aghast to hear they have absolutely no services for survivors of sexual assault; that the only place you can go is a rape crisis center, which is run by barely trained volunteers with no counseling experience and limited hours, and is itself always on the verge of collapse. Sarah Lawrence's excuse was monetary. They just never had the money, for a variety of reasons. And after two years, we finally reached some sort of compromise. It wasn't entirely adequate, but it was better than before. Take Back the Night last year was, for me, the culmination of that particular struggle. Standing there with Erin, watching the writings of all those girls burn, both of us silent, somber, invested in it for entirely different, equally important reasons--I will never forget that moment. I knew even then it would be a memory that even years later, would define Sarah Lawrence for me. But what's Oxford's excuse? The University is endowed with billions; the town itself is more than well off. It's not like they don't have the money. They just funnel it elsewhere. "Into more leather couches"--wryly declared by the American graduate student who's been living in the UK for years and was the instigator of this particular conversation in the first place.

It was just beyond frustrating to hear these girls talk of how they're unable to speak up in front of their male peers; how "feminist is a dirty word;" how the latest bop theme is "Spartans and Sluts" and how that's widely considered respectable. How they run assertiveness training workshops and study skills workshops for women because Oxbridge is notorious for having a finals gap between women and men. How this is still considered in many ways an "old boys school," and as an American, who's spent the entirety of her undergraduate career thus far at an especially liberal, predominately female campus, I am just having a hard time understanding--or rather, accepting--all of this.

Yes, I could--and maybe should--fight that battle again. But walking back in the rain, it was all I could do not to cry.

"Reducing the world is an adult skill"

I will...never ever drink that much whiskey again in my life. Having generally stuck to such things as vodka & orange juice, or girly cocktails, or, here, ciders, I was so very dumb and didn't realize drinking jack & coke is not like those other things. Hence, four drinks later, I amazingly am still upright, wondering why I'm not feeling anything when generally by that point I would be on my ass, and now, nine hours later, I kind of want to die. And I have never had a hangover in my life before. Oh god. Now it's all one big blur. We went the Oxford Union bar, which was absolutely amazing in its sheer classy pretension. Outside there literally were guys in tuxes smoking pipes. Brilliant. And the library looked like something out of Clue, complete with dusty old volumes and velvet draperies. Then we went to the Eagle & Child, where Tolkein and C.S. Lewis used to sit and write, and then we went to the bar underneath the Oxford Union, where the contrast between that and the Union bar itself could not have been greater. Think pounding music, grungy basement setting, and unwashed gothy children throwing them back. Then, after somehow carrying on an entirely lucid conversation with Rachele about our double tutorial, I arrived home around 1:00, only to have some sort of conversation with Fayez about his philosophy of neuroscience course. At some point on the walk home I had "fucking gorgeous" screamed at me by a carful of drunk? British boys. And yet it is never quite that flattering.

So. Somehow today I have to: outline my literature tutorial; start said literature tutorial; plan lowkey dinner gathering for tomorrow evening with the assistance of Amy & Alex (after we couldn't help but comment on the overwhelming attractiveness of Jeff's grad school student golf team captain, he took it upon himself to invite him over, saying I specifically would cook for him) Yeah. I can't cook. So we are having a gathering instead. Also. Must stop feeling nauseous. Right away please. I am already so off schedule.

"I went to bed dreaming you hard, woke with your name like tears on my lips"

It is now almost 1 in the morning, and I am wide awake. You'd think, after spending almost 12 hours reading Portrait of the Lady, until my head was pounding and I thought my eyes were going to fall out of my head, that would not be the case. Somehow, it is. I enjoyed the novel more than I thought I would, though the ending absolutely sucks. So much for female empowerment. Lets all run back to our sleazebag husbands for wont of propriety. Though I think next week I will space out my time in a saner fashion, if Dracula is anywhere near as long as Portrait. Though Dracula has got to be more enjoyable than 636 pages of Henry James in two, almost three sittings. Also, reading in Blackwells makes for a nice change of pace from the library. Somehow, I am less distracted. Which, weirdly, goes against my usual habits. In any case, I can also drink chai while I read. They frown on that in libraries.

I should carve out some time to write emails, send postcards. I always mean to, and then the time just..disappears. Trust, at least, that I'm thinking of you, even if I'm sucky at the whole communicating thing as often as I would like.

Other things to do: sit in a graveyard, for another Oxford description. Contrastingly, sit in the University Parks. (so pretty!) Then write these things up. Go for more walks. Take pictures. Delete old pictures from camera so sim card has room for new pictures. Take a yoga class? Write actual letters. Go out on weeknights. Spend less money. Learn to cook things other than pasta. Not get sick (er). Take Bri's advice.

Obama is leading in the polls, more substantially than before, it would appear. I am still waiting for my absentee ballot. Fairfield Town Hall, why are you so slow?

I am discovering you can forget about a lot when you're away. Alternately, I still choose to remember too much?

One of these days I'll bury him/them for good. Really. Just a matter of time.

“Learn to ask for what you want. The worst people can do is not give you what you ask for which is precisely where you were before you asked.” — Peter McWilliams

^A mentality I should embody. I'd probably be better off I did. Instead of clinging to the belief that somehow asking, and being refused, is worse than never asking at all.


I do wish more of the trees changed color here. And orchards/apple picking. Even in Oxford, there is nothing quite like a New England autumn.

i am nowhere near as good at balance as i am reflection.

currently procrastinating from finishing off another Oxford description.

this is my problem as a writer. (interestingly, declaring yourself a writer has made for controversial discussions over here. apparently many are of the opinion that doing so is pretentious, or idiotic, or simply untrue. we are 'writing students' i am told. not writers. personally, i've always thought of myself as both. what do you think?) whenever I drown in other work (i.e. literature classes/tutorials/essays, etc) i immediately let that take precedence, since it demands the greatest amount of hours, or so it seems. reading lengthy novels, complicated criticisms of said novels, and writing a coherent, ideally innovative or intelligent essay--all of that takes time. or at least i let it. i came to sarah lawrence predominantly for their writing program. i wanted to write all the time, and so we do, but every year i have let other classes push aside my writing classes. paula's trumped rachel's freshman year, even though rachel's was and is the best class i have taken. julie's, however interesting it was (and it was, to be sure) trumped tina's poetry workshop. and now, my literature tutorial seems to trump my fiction one.

i'm well aware that's not how it should be, but i don't know how to work it any other way. and so i panic and take short cuts, and in the end, i'm only screwing myself, since this is primarily what i'm here to learn, why I came to Oxford. take today, for instance. my fiction day. task--come up with 10 pages of writing. out of writer's block stemming from not having written anything creative since last may, and any actual fiction since, oh, my junior year of high school! i ultimately resort to revising, somewhat, the beginning of a novella i had started and never finished. the revision, not nearly as extensive as it should have been, to be fair, still served the purpose of acting as a starting place, and more importantly, letting me figure out where i want to go. now i know, at least tentatively, what i will do for next week. though i can't help but view this week as kind of a cop-out, especially since i didn't turn in ten pages of fiction last week.

i want to be able to write. creatively. and do it well, without anxiety. so how do i do that? how do i relax, find the time, not let one course dominate the other? i worry that if i don't figure that out, i'll never be a real writer, i'll never finish anything, i'll never be able to fashion this into some sort of career. i'm so particular. i can't be sleepy to write, or restless. then it becomes work, and though it is work, should it feel like work? it sucks all the enjoyment out of it. and sometimes i'd rather just read, and i do, voraciously, but perhaps not as much as i should. i fuck around on facebook and other people's blogs, wasting time. tomorrow i have to get out of this flat. even though I have to read the entirety of Portrait of a Lady, I will at least do it in the Radcliffe Camera.

i read at wadham's open mic night last night. there is so much freaking talent at that school. i wish i was musical. sadly, i am not, but sometimes i can write decent poetry. i wouldn't mind reading again.

alex and i were talking today, after drinks with the chaplain (how cool, to be standing in a four hundred year old chapel, as the chaplain keeps pushing more wine on you), saying we really want to meet more oxford/wadham kids, and aren't quite sure how to do that. i am already sensing how quickly time will fly. every single day flies by. it seems far longer than two weeks.

"every single girl on this Programme is going around waving her [metaphorical] panties at every cute guy to pass her by."--katie. sad but true. don't particularly want to be that girl, but of course we are. no one wants to pass up this opportunity, away from sarah lawrence's awkward incestuousness.

right now, amy is out at a pub with two of my flatmates, and i am here, "writing" and soon to be reading. lame. but i am sick, and didn't feel like going out and drinking. everyone is sick. "fresher's flu," they call it.

snippet of conversation i had with x person, after telling them i do tend to get what i want, at least academically: "yes, but you aren't happy." in response i made some inane comment, when i should have said, "well, not entirely, but i am." in any case, i didn't want what he wanted. at least not now. i'm young. i'm ok. it will be fine.

For you, Jo.

What generally happens to me the first week(s) of a new year--and especially when I feel the need to prove myself to someone (which is most of the time, as it stands)--is this. I work ridiculously hard, freak out a lot, and convince myself I am utterly incompetent, my new professor will think I am a moron, and I'll be ripped to shreds. This is my mindset for the days leading up to when my first essay is due. This past week, triple that anxiety. Keep in mind, none of us have written anything remotely academic for a good five months. I was about ready to tear out my hair or burst into tears. I bang out, over the course of an excruciating two and a half days, what I think amounts to eight pages of babble. This morning is my first literature tutorial. As I sit down, and he begins to read my essay to me, stopping now and again to make a comment, I experience something entirely unexpected--a sense of relief. It's nowhere near as bad as I thought. It's certainly not indicative of my best work, but it's passable. There are some good points. I'm doing fine. As Rachele and I headed out the door (I have a double tutorial with her), he told both of us, "you're off to an excellent start." Thank god--and Rachel Cohen, and Julie Abraham, and even Paula Loscocco. I have been groomed well at Sarah Lawrence. I can do this after all. I'm sure every week will be much of the same hair-tearing-out-oh-god-my-brain-is-exploding, but I can do it. For next week: reading Portrait of a Lady, and writing on the topic of "alliances"--cultural, social, why women make the choices they do, etc. After that, just in type for All Hallows Eve here, it's Dracula.

My fiction tutorial also went well, though I rambled on like an idiot, stumbling over myself every time I actually paused to listen to the words coming out of my mouth. I also, thanks to a miscommunication, didn't have the ten pages of fiction I was supposed to, and focused on the wrong literary aspect for my creative reading, but she was fine about that. She even liked two of the Oxford descriptions I wrote, ironically, the ones I thought were my worst. My task today is to find another 4 places to write about, and do so. Later on, the girls in my flat are having some of the Wadham people who live in Merifield as well over for tea, and tonight I'm thinking about heading over to Wadham's open mic. Definitely to listen, perhaps to read some of my own poetry as well. We'll see. Tomorrow is my fiction day, where hopefully I can bang out ten pages, though I have absolutely no idea what I want to write about. Which, you know, is a problem. Then the rest of the week will be devoted to Portrait of a Lady. I'm trying to find a schedule that works, and still allows me enough free time to feel sane.

What else? I'm sick, which sucks. Amy is convinced it's because of stress. I'm convinced it's because of all the germy undergrads passing things around. In any case, I am on day four of a sore throat that won't quit. My uncle passed away unexpectedly last week, which led to me having a major emotional crisis thinking about the ages of my own parents, and a tearful middle of the night phone call home to Eunice. I signed up for a million different clubs at Fresher's Fair--the Isis, etcetera, and Call & Response, which are all literary magazines; a salsa dancing club, Oxford's feminist society, various left-leaning political groups, and the Law Society, among other things. The Law Society, shamefully because they are known for throwing the classiest events, and having the cutest men. And well, I need to get laid. Not right now--I can't even think about sex right now--but eventually. The pub crawl presented one such opportunity, thanks to a pair of blond & drunken jocks hitting on me & Alex, but that was just not going to happen. At all. Coincidentally, I have been spending more money on drinks than I even want to think about. I hit four of the pubs on the pub crawl before deciding I was having trouble staying upright, and it was time to quit. Though I was with it enough to turn to Alex, who was starting to express concern over me, and say "don't worry, I'm lucid enough to know the exchange rate is not in my favor." Indeed. But it is getting better, bit by bit.

Sat in Blackwell's for an hour yesterday before my tutorial, and met three freshers, one of which was quite attractive, and they quizzed me about America. "It's a big place," I kept telling them. "It's not like I've seen most of it." I did, however, know more about Oxford than they did, ironically, telling them about the book tunnels under the Bodleian and various other such things.

Essentially we read, write, wander the streets, stress to each other, sleep a little and drink a lot. I'm trying to be a little less shy. I'm better in small gatherings, not so good in bars. I sit there with my drink, smile prettily, wait for people to smile back. Oxford will be good to me, I think.

That is all.

"Fiction is like a spider's web"

Things have been so crazy hectic here, I've ended up writing in this not nearly as often as I promised myself I would. Hopefully that will be remedied in the future. And I have to get around to posting pictures this weekend. It is going in the schedule. You know how I do. So, a quick recap: Saturday was London. As I've never been anywhere in Europe, with the recent exception of parts of Spain, I pretty much wandered around with Amy, and later on, Jeff, completely agape, taking in as much as we could in an afternoon and evening. The wonderful thing is London is only about an hour away from Oxford and buses run all day and all night, for the relatively decent sum of 10 pounds. The Programme took us to the Tower of London--full of bloody history, some interesting buildings, and hilarious tour guides. The place where such notables as Anne Boleyn and Guy Fawkes were executed. From there we were left to explore on our own. Amy & I headed to Westminster Abbey, St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park (by which point the fog was rolling in and I couldn't help feeling like I was wandering through a moor ala Wuthering Heights), and Herrods. Which was five floors of pretty things I will never be able to afford, but Amy & I did buy some excellent tea & split an amazing strawberry tart. On our way to finding the bus station--which became an adventure in and of itself--we ended up having dinner in this cute little pub. I've had so many people refer to me as "love" or sweetheart." It's kind of refreshing change from New York. We crashed on the bus, and came back to our flat for a low-key nightcap before wandering off to bed. Sunday...I don't even remember what we did. It feels like I've been here far longer than a week & everything is beginning to blur. There has been lots of exploring the city centre--chock full of useful department stores and amazing bookshops (Blackwells = heaven) and cute clothing stores, and oh god, the architecture. The Radcliffe Camera, the undergraduate reading room in the Bodleian, is this impressive, gorgeous building that tourists aren't even allowed into. And I can saunter into whatever I want, and actually do work there. It's so surreal. I can't imagine having to go back. The States seem a million miles away right now. We went to the College Bar again last night (each Oxford College has one) and stayed for a few hours meeting other Wadham students, most of whom have been lovely & congenial & eager to talk. One somewhat geeky Wadham fresher who I've bumped into half a dozen times but can't recall his name definitely has developed a crush on me. Which is cute. Though at 17 & 18 they're rather young for us. However, attractive men are a dime a dozen here. Also refreshing. I can't remember the last time I've been surrounded by a group of intelligent, attractive, polite guys who actually seem to care about what you're saying. So far, it's been a frequent occurrence.

Tonight the Sarah Lawrence girls in the flat next door to ours had a bunch of us over for dinner & drinks. We reminisced about Sarah Lawrence, talked about the election, told summer housing horror stories. It was a lot of fun & exactly what I needed tonight, as the combination of sleeping too little & running around every day has hinted at signs of possible sickness. And tomorrow will be more than enough debauchery I am sure, as it's the official Fresher's Week Pub Crawl--10 pubs, and then a Club night. As last night I was fairly sloshed on a pint of cider, I'm not so sure how well I'll do..

I met my fiction tutor yesterday--this older woman who lives in this tiny house literally across the street from a meadow, and has all these cats, and her study was chock full of books. I think it's going to be so good. She gave me my first assignment--to pick four or five places in Oxford--a mix of the monumental and the slightly dodgy--and stay there for fifteen minutes each, jotting down my impressions, leaving myself out of it. A lot like what I used to do for Rachel in my first year studies. Then I go back and write half page descriptions of each. Rather interesting, and it will give me a perfect excuse to wander around Oxford--and also an opportunity to get over my fears of being lost. She also assigned me a book which I really meant to start reading tonight, but that may not happen as I'm fairly exhausted & have to be up early tomorrow for Wadham's club fair. The Art of Fiction by John Gardner. I also have weekly "creative reading" assignments, where I go to the town library in Oxford, pick five or six books at random, open to a chapter, and see how they talk about character or scene. I'm expected to turn in roughly 10 pages a week, which seems manageable. I'm excited. Though I have no idea what places I should write about. I've been taking suggestions: Cornmarket Street on a Saturday morning; the Christ Church meadows, Magdalen grave yard, the shops near Cowley--there's so much to choose. Tomorrow I meet my literature tutor, who is the head of the department at Wadham. Hopefully he won't be too intimidating. I've heard wonderful things about him. It's also a double tutorial, with Matt, so that might relieve some of the anxiety.

I plan on signing up for loads of literary magazines while I'm here. If I could get on the staff of the Isis that would be absolutely amazing, not to mention looking pretty damn good on my resume. And I want to do Call & Response, the zine that goes back and forth between Wadham & Sarah Lawrence. I also should head over to the gym right near our flats, even though its rather pricey, and see about yoga classes. I'm going to have to find some way to zen out when my stress level rockets.

The weird dreams have continued. I've partially resigned myself to thinking I might be stuck with them for awhile. And most of them I can't remember upon waking. I'm just left with fleeting impressions.

I've been too busy to have been anything but happy. Everything else feels so far away. In some strange way, I'm having the Orientation I never did have. All the experience of two years of college work behind me but without the baggage I dragged along. It all feels so irrelevant here. A clean slate. Most of the Sarah Lawrence people don't even know that much about me. A perfect balance. For the first time in such a fucking long time, I don't feel that profound sense of longing. It might still be there, momentarily buried, but for now, anxieties & anticipation aside, I'm starting to settle. Which is good, yes? I'm trying not to look for anything or anyone. The next time I'm chased, I need it to be right. Or at the very least, more right than it's been.

I couldn't sleep a few nights ago & started re-reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. I had never finished reading it back in high school, but had underlined all these passages I found particularly relevant. It was interesting seeing what still (and more importantly, what no longer) seemed to strike me. "Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor," she writes. "because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong..."

I imagine I'll go back to her as the trimester progresses.

I have no idea what I want to write about for my fiction tutorial. I need inspiration, which, amazingly, I feel I'm lacking. Maybe I'm just rusty. Or maybe my wanderings will be just what I need.

"My months change like seasons these days..."

Tonight, our first real bonding night, was wonderful. After all the practical filling-out-paperwork-sessions of this morning & afternoon, we had a four course, ridiculously English, dinner party at the Great Hall in Wadham, with about 100 guests in attendance--SLC Program students, Wadham staff, and various tutors. Jeff & I (one of my lovely flatmates) ended up sitting across from this totally sloshed professor who kept winking at all the girls & regaling us with Wadham lore. The whole time I kept thinking, "this is exactly what I pictured it to be." I wish I brought my camera. With these long tables and candles everywhere, it really did look like something out of Harry Potter. And all the drinks, good lord. All everyone drinks here it seems is wine. Glass after glass. And then off to the College Bar, for more drinks. And then we had Pimms--the British equivalent to sangria--once we returned to our flats. A solid six hours of drinking on and off, no wonder I'm still tipsy.

There our five of us in this particular flat, five more next door. We're living in North Oxford, the ritzy side of town, where mansions go for one or two million quid at least. The flats are gorgeous and huge. I have a massive room, and terrace doors that open onto a private lawn. Now if we had heat, and could figure out how to use our oven and gas burners, things would be just entirely fabulous. My flatmates are wonderful--Amy and I are the only two Sarah Lawrence students, Jeff is from Swarthmore, Alex from Wesleyan, and Mark from Reid--and there are all Sarah Lawrence students in the flat next door. The next day I have that isn't utterly insane--probably sometime next week--I have to wander around Oxford and take pictures of everything. And then post them. Right after I post the ones from Spain.

"I thought I was on the set of Gossip Girl when you two walked in"--drunk Wadham student to Alex & I. Were then warned by other student to be wary of Oxford men who like to rack up American girls like a game. There will be none of that. I'll have to come up with some sort of screening process. Yes. Hah.

Tomorrow I see my mother for dinner in town, and then I don't see her again until Christmas. I spent two plus weeks with her, and by the time I arrived in Oxford I was going a little nuts. Yet now that she's leaving, I'm really going to miss her. And this afternoon was not at all how I wanted it to be, especially after the nightmare I had last night, where I was off somewhere doing something, I don't know what, except I felt guilty about it, only to come back to receive a phone call saying that she might have died. Woke from the dream in a jolt, 5 am, crying. I know she's worn out, fed up, ready to go home. She's starting to look her age for the first time & that scares me. I saw her for about forty minutes this afternoon, after getting lost in the rain, and by the time we finally found each other I had barely any time before having to rush back to get ready for tonight. And I didn't tell her what I wanted to tell her, because I would have started to cry again. What can I say? I still need my mother. Anything else is intolerable. And it's hard not to feel like time is ticking by....

I can't quite figure out what my style in this should be. Who my audience exactly is. I don't even know who really reads this for sure. How personal (or not) to get.

Bed time.

"When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time..."

Arrived in Oxford earlier than I thought I would yesterday, and upon exiting Heathrow felt this immediate sort of calm that I haven't experienced in I don't even know how long. It was twilight out, and not terribly cold, and the sun was setting, casting this soft glow on all the fields we drove past and it was just so peaceful. I stared out the window, wide awake, and couldn't help feeling that I belonged here...it just felt so very right. Later on there were minor annoyances--half the heavy electrical appliances I dragged all over Spain--hair dryer, straightner, transformer for said items--are impossible to use here, even with adapters--they just aren't strong enough--and so I had to buy said items here, paying double, exactly what I didn't want to do. But you know, the best laid plans. And I need to not do mental conversions from the pound to the dollar all the time, but accept that it is what it is, and be frugal. (However, if they were equal, Oxford would be remarkably affordable...) It is also a hell of a lot colder than I was expecting--hopefully my suitcases and things will be waiting for me tomorrow when I move into my flat, and then Amy and I begin the task of making it a cozy little home for the next nine months.

Everyone that I've met so far has been really quite nice. Yesterday at the bus station there was a small welcoming committee of Oxford upperclassmen there to greet the arriving international students. A very polite & smiling boy offered to carry my bags, but I declined as it was only a short walk to the taxi stand. God bless good samaritans--I've been dragging an insane amount of things with me and have almost toppled over in three different train stations in Spain. Every single time people have rushed to help me. One of the advantages of being a small girl, I suppose. I work it.

Oxford is so fucking pretty. I can't wait to just wander around and take pictures. I can't believe I'm actually here.

***

It's funny. Here, men look at me and smile. Cute young American thing, perhaps they think. In Spain, hardly anyone looked at me. All the women I encountered were these gorgeous thin model-looking creatures, and I felt utterly insignificant in comparison. It was hard not to be reduced to high-school era compulsions, when I was a sixteen year old anorexic Lolita & yet I had more men after me then than now. But that's an entry for a different time. If at all. Not the same girl. Things to keep repeating. I'm better now--more together for sure. In retrospect, I don't know how I managed for four years on 700 calories a day, still pulling a 4.0 g.pa., and with everything else that was going on in my life too. Sheer will, I suppose. I knew what I had to do. But not why I did it. There is that compulsion though, still, despite everything I've accomplished since then & how far I've come. Be thinner, prettier, smarter. 5'2, 100 pounds. I don't need to lose any weight...I've been told I'm far sexier now than when I was at 90. But I don't necessarily believe it myself. I just keep parroting what other people tell me. Hasn't that always been my problem? Taking others to heart too much--or not at all. Where's my hard won faith in myself?

I still have these fantasies of what it will be like when I go home & what it will be like here. Dangerous, that. Reality is probably safer. I wonder (know) that I'm too attached to things (people) I probably won't ever have. The smarter thing would be to--what? I don't know. Wow. How cryptic can I be?

You need to be more assertive, my mother tells me. Isn't that the truth? Cute & sweet can get me far, but I resent it as much as I play into it. Maybe that's why fleetingly I miss him. Not that that made it any better--being wanted like that. Ah, more crypticness. In any case. I can be powerful & passionate too. I want to be stunning. Cute & sweet, it's a safety mechanism. Maybe I'm tired of playing it safe. Maybe I'm tired of "maybe." Live it up, Roo wrote me. Take risks. Be wild. How often am I? But I wonder if I'm past the stage of reinventing myself entirely. I wouldn't want to. That quote you had up, Lisa--"There's no such thing as autobiography; there's only art and lies"--that resonates more than most things I've read in a while.

As luck would have it.

Supposedly, in the last 365 days, in Sevilla it has rained for only 5 of them. It just never really rains here--it's so arid. But as luck would have it, it's absolutely pouring today, and the prediction is more of the same for tomorrow. My mother is about to lose it, I think. Spain isn't like England or France--it's a country where everything is designed with pleasant weather in mind. All the sights are outside. We made the best of it today, going shopping & seeing the major cathedral, and I managed to find a cute little black pencil skirt which fit me perfectly--something I hadn't been able to do in the States, no matter how hard I tried. So success.

I was telling my mother earlier I can't believe by the time Oxford really starts up--in about two and a half to three weeks, I wouldn't have done anything academic whatsoever for almost five months. It makes me feel somewhat intellectually moronic. Or just really fucking lazy. I have expressed this neurosis to people many times over the past few weeks, but I really worry about whether or not I'll be up to snuff at Oxford. Or whether I am just going to get torn apart, confidence completely shredded. I have not written anything in five months, besides formulaic reader's reports I could probably do in my sleep now. I kind of feel like maybe I've lost it. Though that's ridiculous, I know. But I worry. A lot. And no matter what anyone has said to reassure me, I still feel like it could maybe be an uphill struggle. I really hope it's not.

Every single night since we arrived in Spain I've had really fucking weird dreams. Everything from Darrell Ayer, who I probably haven't seen since I was 16, showing up at my twenty first birthday party and eating guacamole out of a bowl with someone's severed finger--I blame St. Theresa and her own rotting digit for that one--to an anxiety riddled one where I'm at some dinner party with a few Fairfield friends, and Kira casually mentions she's going to visit Alan in Delaware, and I realize I'm still so hurt by everything (not that I didn't realize that, but I love me some denial) to reliving old romantic liaisons with Z, to one where I'm hooking up with Nick and on waking up just feel sad.

It's only been a little over a week & already I feel like I haven't talked to people in such a long time. I guess that's what happens when you're used to always being keyed in to the world and then suddenly get dropped in a place without easy internet access & where phone calls have to be short and sweet. Though keep those texts coming. I mean it. It reminds me that people out there are missing me too.

More later--I'll write about this insane old Spanish mansion we're staying in--250 rooms, a couple dozen courtyards. Absolutely beautiful. I'll have to get around to posting pictures sooner or later.

I also cannot get that line from My Fair Lady out of my head for some absurd reason: "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain." Lies.

Until later, my darlings.

Spain, Part I--original, I know.

We arrived in Sevilla yesterday afternoon, after six days of Madrid, many of which now seem a hazy blur, due to a combination of jetlag and a frenetic touring pace. Madrid was lovely--a combination of Athens and New York, but Sevilla, at least the Old City, where we're staying, has much more of an old-world feel---that cinematic perfection you expect after too many viewings of Pedro Almodovar films or Under the Tuscan Sun. I think I’ve finally started adjusting to the time difference as well (6 hours, for those of you wondering), though I’ve been popping Tylenol PM like an addict to make the transition go a little quicker.

Our flight to Madrid landed around 7:30 last Friday morning, which meant we had been up pretty much the whole night, and so the very first thing we proceeded to do upon arriving at our hotel is exactly what everyone tells you not to do—and that is to sleep. For approximately five hours, though that did very little to alleviate the jetlag. It kind of felt like I was supremely inebriated, minus my penchant for flirtiness and vaguely inappropriate confessional statements, and with the addition of a rollicking tension headache I had managed to give myself while clutching my mother’s hand in terror for the duration of the flight. The Xanax script was utterly useless. Clearly, my doctor’s assumption that at 100 pounds, half a pill should be enough to knock me out, was incorrect. Very much so. Can’t say I’m looking forward to my flight into Heathrow on Monday, but I’m much more worried about my transatlantic solo flights come December. Well. There’s three months between then and now. We’ll see how it goes.

So Friday was spent sleeping & wandering Madrid in a haze, circling the same streets & trying to get our bearings. We were staying in a hotel off the Gran Via, which is Madrid’s equivalent to Broadway. Cute little cafes and tapas bars are as liberally dispersed as Starbucks and McDonalds (which our tour guide on Saturday morning referred to, not so lovingly, as the American Embassy). Saturday was a tour of Madrid by day—all the major monuments, and the Palacio Real, which was incredible. The architecture of the city is monumental—all these gorgeous massive buildings, the Palace obviously being the most impressive. 3000 rooms, only a few dozen of which are open to the public at any given time, but all of which remain furnished. There’s also a lavish garden-maze, and the Palace is situated across the street from one of Madrid’s many plazas. In the evening we had yet another tour of Madrid (many of the same places, but lit up) and tapas and a flamenco show at this famous nightclub located in Madrid’s equivalent to Central Park, only far prettier and greener. Sunday was spent touring the cities of Avila and Segovia, about an hour and a half north of Madrid, up in the mountains. Avila was the birthplace of St. Theresa of Avila, and Catholicism features pretty prominently there (as it does throughout Spain, old mosques and synagogues having been co-opted by the Catholic Church during the Renaissance). The house where St. Theresa was born in is now a convent for the same order of nuns she belonged to, who were all for self-induced forms of punishment. The convent also holds a collection of relics, the most memorable being one of the fingers of St. Theresa. I’m sure some people find viewing it a sort of spiritual experience…I just thought it was rather gruesome. Among the highlights of Segovia—a hundreds year old castle that Walt Disney fell in love with and subsequently modeled the Disney castle after. The resemblance is most evident in the various towers.

Monday was a half day tour of Toledo, the birthplace of El Greco, and the former capital of Spain—a city where Muslims, Jews, and Christians all co-existed peacefully for hundreds of years; where the Muslims built the Jews a synagogue—that during the Inquisition was then taken over and turned into a Cathedral. Tuesday was our most relaxing day—no particular agenda or tour guide herding us around. Just wandering the Prado, parks, and café’s. Wednesday was the Escorial, the palace/fortress King Philippe II built for himself, which also holds the mausoleum for all the dead kings and queens of Spain and their children. Interesting and yet creepy.

***

I’ll save my impressions of Sevilla & the Alhambra for tomorrow, I think. Spain Part II.

"Finally see what it means to be living..."

In roughly 24 hours I will be arriving in Madrid. And I am strangely calm. Perhaps because I spent so much of the past week being so incredibly anxiety driven that there is nothing left to do but be calm. Even about the flight(s). This may not be true once I am actually onboard the plane, but for the moment in any case. You cure your patients of flying phobias all the time, I reminded my mother. Why can't you cure me?

She just gave me a look. "Because you won't listen to it coming from me, as your mother." I suppose I am always rather skeptical. But then she went on to make an observation that probably should have been obvious and yet I hadn't really thought of it like this. "I think it's about control, with you," she said. "Yes, you have your irrational fears that the plane might crash, but really I think it's about giving up all control. Which you hate to do. But once you commit to being in that plane, you don't have any choice. There's nothing you can do."

Maybe she's right. I made light of her comments at the time, but maybe she nailed it. I do have this compulsive need for options.

I can't believe how fast this week has gone by. Will the days fly like this once I'm in Oxford? I hope not. I want to enjoy my time for all its worth.

"You're getting exactly what you wanted," I was reminded earlier. "You've wanted this since you were a junior in high school; since you first started considering Sarah Lawrence." This is also true. And four years later, it's actually happening. I guess I never really thought it wouldn't.

This will be the longest time I have ever been away from home, from the majority of my safety nets, and can only be beneficial I'm sure. I'm slightly hesitant to say I'd like to reinvent myself--I know it's not that easily done; intrinsic qualities and all. But I'd like to come back stronger, more sure of myself & of what I want--personally and professionally. Almost five months of summer vacation, working & interning aside, will give you lots of time to think. I don't want to keep repeating the same patterns ad naseum because I'm too afraid to let go, cut ties, move on, definitively. At a certain point you just have to accept that people are the way they are, and stop hoping for a change that just isn't going to come. Even if in the smallest part of my mind, I'm still holding out for that. Well, I shouldn't. If only because my pride won't stand for it. I'm leaving for Europe; why am I still thinking about these things? Maybe tomorrow I will feel something akin to what Joan Didion once said she felt when flying: her cares just slipping away in the face of all that ocean.

I'm actually doing this. Something entirely new & terrifying & exhilarating. It's about time.

All possible variations

It took me so long to finally set up this account, and now that I have, I don't know what to say. Of course.

Well. I'm leaving for Spain in a little less than 48 hours, everything packed & ready to go, minus a few last minute details that will be taken care of sometime between now and Thursday morning. I'm trying to be less anxious about everything, especially the flight(s). From the (admittedly few) pictures I've seen, Sevilla & Madrid both look absolutely gorgeous. I don't know how twelve days of uninterrupted mother-daughter time will play out. Hopefully, smoothly.

So what have I done with my time these past few days, besides running around checking things off a multitude of to-do lists? Read The Emperor's Children, which was quite good and which I hadn't gotten to all summer. Watched that Lifetime movie on Coco Chanel. Drank absurd amounts of tea. Got into a messy fight with my father over old grievances I can't (won't, shouldn't?) forgive. Mainly though, I've been saying goodbyes. First to longtime Fairfield friends--the Holland Hill girls, Cari, Chelsea, Bri. Then up to Sarah Lawrence, where it felt somewhat unreal to be wandering around with nothing in particular to do, not needing to partake in the chaos of interviews, close to something like nostalgia all the same. It didn't really hit me as all that strange however, until I was wrapped up in a sleeping bag on the floor of Eunice's room in Andrews Court and realized, in a way that I didn't quite realize it at the end of last year, being sick & burned out & the whole summer still before me, that it won't ever quite be like that again. That house, those people. And I'll miss it & them. A lot. Even knowing this year, that time would pass & I would be elsewhere, was odd. Then Marty up at Smith, and finally back to Fairfield for one more, last Saturday.

Enough of this, Amy would say. Has said. You're looking back when you should be looking forward. That's probably true. Even this, cataloging goodbyes.

I am excited to be going, despite my nervousness about various things. I'm trying not to make this year become about anything in particular, though its hard not to. There's always that fantasy of what a new place can be; what I need it to be. We'll see.