"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.