"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.