"The way to become someone's God is to disappear"--quote from Mona Simpson's The Lost Father, her sequel to Anywhere But Here that I started before I came back to Sarah Lawrence--and consequentially means, now that classes have started, I probably won't finish until Christmas? Hopefully not. I think it's partially true though; that quote. If you're inclined to develop certain kinds of attachments to people. The way, I guess, I'm inclined.

I keep having the same nightmare, substituting different people as the aggressor. Three times in the past week. I don't know the last time I had a restful night of sleep.

I don't know where I want to be right now, exactly, or what I want to be doing. I feel like I'm out of practice at this whole class-homework-existing on a campus grind. It will be fine, because it always is--every year has worked out--but right now, I just feel aimless and anxious all at once. Like I should be doing something to fill the hours now (because soon enough they'll be filled for me) but I don't know what that is. I'm being pro-active, telling Lindsay I'll help her with the literary magazine; accepting that nomination to be on the Senior Gift Committee; hopefully getting that job as a Senior Interviewer. Maybe tutoring through America Reads--I could use the money, to be honest. Just trying to fill time. Time--time and memory--the subject of my Anthropology class. I forgot the vague process of settling on a conference project; the tinglings of creativity that you finally twinge out into something cohesive. Anything creative or artistic always starts out with that feeling for me--the best way I can describe it is like a tickle, totally obscured, that eventually settles into some sort of specificity. I have vague ideas of time and healing, the structure of time in literature; choosing to forget. There are always so many options.

I want it to be autumn, so I can spend my days in tights and dresses and long cardigans; drink chai tea; take long walks. Feel more settled, somehow. Fall has always suited my aesthetic and sensibilities best, I think. I hate the freezing cold, and I hate the heat and humidity of summer. Spring makes me restless. I am too particular. Maybe.

Rachel, when I went into her office last week, told me it was ok that I don't have a plan. That maybe that's better. "You can't possibly fuck it up now, Michelle," she said. "You're too good. You have an excellent resume, you do excellent work. You will get a job. You will be fine. It's ok to play now." But I want to know. I entertained the idea of taking French this year, with the goal being to go back eventually; sometime between the end of the year and grad school. I didn't, but I could always take a summer course. I could always do anything.

I don't even know if I want to be writing.



Edit:

That's funny. I didn't even notice it was three months to the day since I last updated this blog. Three months ago I was in Oxford. It feels far longer; so much has happened in the interim.

A year isn’t just the good things. It’s everything else, too. The early-morning hangovers, tearful confessions, that one-too-many glass of wine. Fighting loneliness, fighting fear, just plain old fighting. The disappointments, the rejections, the fantasies that don’t quite come true. The nights that seem too long, the days you just can’t seem to get it together. All of that makes up the year. The good and the bad. The days you’d want to repeat a million times, and the ones you can’t think about too much because weeks, months later, they still sting. The emergency room visits, the homesick trans-Atlantic phone calls, the “it’s not you but I’m just not ready.” Too much too soon and circumstances out of your control. A year is dancing in the kitchen but breaking down in your best friend’s arms. The nights tangled up in bed with a boy, and the nights you walked home alone. Intertwining your life with these people you come to like and love, then having to say goodbye. A year is all of that. Just moments. Just snapshots. Of the mundane and the novel; the heartbreaking, beautiful, strange, and confusing. That’s all it is. This blog, this year. That’s all.

Other things I will miss: cheap fresh flowers, Marks & Spencer, the insanely late summer sunsets, 2-for-1 Wednesdays, Womcam, college bars, pubs, pub food, Pimms, Magdalen deer park, Oxford house parties, flat raves, Hassans, balls, Blackwell's hot chocolate, the fiction section of the Oxfordshire Public Library, Grand Cafe cocktails, going out multiple nights of the week, cute Brit boys buying me drinks, cute Brit boys, Holywell cemetery, The Vaults & Gardens, being called 'love,' the ivory tower, Oxford eccentricities, Oxford history, easy access to nightclubs, walking everywhere, 'cheers' as 'thank-you,' London, the Bodleian, cobblestone streets, the plethora of tea shops, mild (most of the time) weather.

Things I won't: The exchange rate. Windy, rainy days when an umbrella is useless. Bringing along my passport every time I want to buy a bottle of alcohol. Cornmarket late at night. The insanely early summer sunrises.

It's not quite an even split is it? No, I guess not.

"You only long for a place when you weren't really there to begin with," Linda said today. "When you were either caught up in the past or the future." An interesting, perhaps obvious idea. It makes sense. The places I can conjure at any moment are the ones I know like the back of my hand--Fairfield, the Cape, and Sarah Lawrence. Because I've spent years and years in all three. "Spend the next few weeks just sitting, observing," Linda told me. "Then no matter where you are, you'll always be able to go back."

So much of the last few weeks has become conflated, tied up with anxiety about leaving, inherent self consciousness, whatever it is I'm looking for. Projected onto other people, other things. "You have this fantasy world going," Jeff said last week. "It's because you're a writer." True. Or maybe it's just because I'm me. I guess you remember the good & leave out all the rest. I guess that's the best way to remember--at least this year.

So--what comes to mind at this very moment: first Oxford snowfall, running outside Merifield at midnight, bundled into sweatshirts and boots, everyone as giddy as little kids; Shawshank Redemption at the end of first term, a quiet night at home, Jeff running out to get wine; our first London excursion; the pub crawl during Fresher's Week, just for my inebriated comment to Alex about the exchange rate, and our bonding on the walk home; Halloween ghost tour with Amy; Christmas dinner in Hall; the lowkey days before term picks up, as we all trickle back to the flat. Every bop once we became close with the Brits. Spur of the moment London coffee date/ cute-boy flirty texts all the way through Europe. "You have interesting eyes." Exeter Ball debauchery; Manaka's birthday night at Bridge / piggy back rides down George Street at two in the morning / the night-before-Mayday / Wadstock Nelson-Mandela. And the Nelson Mandela at the end of Hilary term. Actually, pretty much every Nelson Mandela. The day the exchange rate dropped to 1.3 and we all rushed out to buy wine & desserts & things we didn't need. February snowstorms; Girls-only Valentine's day party; wandering around Bath with my best friend. Canterbury hotel rooms with Alex & inside jokes. Fireworks outside my window on Guy Fawkes night; lazy afternoons at Blackwells; Radcliffe Square at night. Twilight with Che; Oxford Autumn/Spring. When Cari came to visit. The fairy-like gardens of Anne Boleyn's home in Kent. Aimless walks with the girls in Summertown.

Lots of things.

Everyone asking last night how it feels to be leaving in a month made for some rather unsettling anxiety dreams. I woke up out of sorts, remembering something about standing in the rain, lamenting the lack of proper tea.

I am trying out a new strategy in regards to all this--denial. Just don't think about it.

Summer Eights was Saturday--an afternoon of Pimms, and boat races, and more Pimms, and basking in the sunshine, and crappy wine, and an ad hoc picnic. Monday was Che's birthday/flat rave, last night was Jonny & Kate's joint birthday party, tomorrow night is Keelan's, the night after that Jesse's goodbye party, the day after that London/Alex's birthday party. I will have been out every night this week except tonight.

"At least you'll have so many people you can crash with if/when you come visit next year," Emily said. This is true/ good to know if I come back with Amy next summer.

I have been mentally compiling lists lately. Of things to do, things I'll miss, things I won't miss at all.

However, what I need to actually be doing right now is writing. So I'm going to go try and do that. Even though I don't want to. I have too much trouble quieting my mind.

Whenever I get restless, or overanxious, I flit my time away on inane things, while secretly desiring to do something wild or impulsive. Like now, for instance. What I should be doing: reading Seamus Heaney before I have to start getting dressed up for the Dean's dinner tonight. Especially since this week's topic is going to be a bitch. Something about how every poem is actually a metaphor for what's going on in Ireland. But my Irish history is rather sorely lacking. At least I think that's what I'm supposed to write about this week. For some reason, I can't quite remember what Ballam said.

I have all this nervous energy & I don't know what to do with myself. Falling into daydreams about the future, about whether or not I'll end up back here. I think the only way I'll be able to leave is if I tell myself that maybe I will. And I'm going to apply to the English MST just to see what happens. Just to keep all my options open.

I'm not sure what I want right now. Drunken exuberant conversations on empty Oxford streets as night finally falls. A sweaty club. To make stupid decisions & not be hurt by them later. I get attached to people quickly. It's always been a virtue & a fault. One I don't know how to go about changing. That's why I can't do random hookups. Most of the time, anyway. I think I have control, but I hardly ever do. Maybe I just like the image. It's enticing, that act. Even if it is just an act. I fall hard. That's why it's been a month & I still care.

I have been listening to Kate Voegele's cover of Hallelujah on repeat. I think I like it better than the Rufus Wainright version, surprisingly. Tomorrow--read all day, go out for Luke's birthday at night. Saturday--watch Wadham in Summer Eights. Sunday--question mark. Work. Yes. Monday--Che's birthday. Tuesday--another birthday/club outing. Etc, etc.

Who wants to give me a crash course in Irish politics? Le sigh.

It's really kind of awful the way the Professor of Poetry elections have degenerated into such a total shitshow. And that Ruth Padel was forced to resign because of blatant sexism as much as the unfortunate fact that she had to open her mouth about the allegations against Walcott instead of just waiting and riding out the tide. It's frustrating too, (though not really surprising) the way so many of the British academics & literati have swarmed to Walcott's defense, and yet they're ready to crucify Padel over a much lesser offense. If she really did organize the smear campaign, that's one thing, and there should be consequences for that. But talking to two newspapers about allegations that were, as she herself pointed out, 'already in the public domain' hardly seems severe enough a crime to warrant a forced resignation. And it really pisses me off that the defense most commonly used in this whole debacle, at least as far as Walcott goes, is that 'it would be almost impossible to find a professor of his generation who hadn't done the same thing.' That, or--Lord Byron was a womanizer, Eliot was a racist, Coleridge was a smackhead, and so on and so forth, and so Walcott should be excused for his behavior since so many of the greats before him also had raging character flaws. And that that shouldn't be enough to deny someone the post. But, I'm sorry--it's not the seventeen hundreds, or even the nineteen hundreds. If you're being put up for the second most prestigious poetry post in the entire country--a position that intrinsically entails working with students--and you have two cases of sexual harrassment under your belt, yeah, I think that should sufficiently knock you out of the running. And yet Oxford, for all that I adore about it, is still in so many ways that 'good ole boys club.' Of course Padel got reamed. She knocked England's big boy out of the way--many in this community weren't going to take that lightly.

It is too bad, all around. For women, for women artists, for the work Padel was planning on doing in British schools, taking poetry back to the classroom in interesting, concrete ways. And it's too bad for the position itself, which is going to be colored by scandal, whoever eventually takes the post.

On to other things.

I still have no desire to write, and I really don't know why. It's like pulling teeth banging out a page. And I procrastinate like all hell. Hah. Like now, writing this.

How many people still read this? I was a bad little blogger for quite some time, so for all I know I may have lost quite a bit of my happy little readership.

I still want to go up to him & say, I'm only here for a month more, and I'm worth it. This doesn't have to be anything--I know you don't want it to be anything--but I'm worth it. Except, you know, people don't actually say those things. And it probably wouldn't matter, even if I did. It's just frustrating. I don't want to leave with regrets.

I don't want to leave I don't want to leave I don't want to leave. I don't even want to think about leaving, but at night--especially now, in these early hours before dawn, when I'm wired and restless, though shouldn't be--it's all I can think about. I don't know when that shift happened--when Oxford stopped being just a beautiful place and worked its way into my blood. When the thought of having to leave turns my stomach into knots, makes me distant and moody. Knowing it's going to break my heart. Reminding me of Rebecca's entries from last year, Dublin, asking "do you know what leaving does?"

I want more time. For the friends I made here, and the relationships that were over before they could even properly begin. For the libraries and the parks and walks at dusk and every street I can trace blindfolded, and for everything I still haven't seen. For feeling calm, and level, and content (except for now, these past few weeks, when I am all nerves). I don't know what route is the best to take. Ashley, and bask in denial, maybe. Amy, who will carry on her connections. Alex, who's already looking ahead. A lot can happen in a month, I know. But I want more time. Desperately. I want more chances. I want to be here, in this life. I'm terrified it won't ever be like this again.

Oh, procrastination.

I am completely lacking in creative inspiration. Which, ok, is problematic when you have ten pages of fiction due imminently, and the last thing you want to do is write. I can bullshit a literature essay--and apparently my tutor prefers those then the ones I have poured hours into, so who knows what that means for this year--but I can't exactly bullshit creative work.

I think I'm just tired of doing work in general. We all are. I don't even want to think about leaving Oxford, but then again I am. Looking ahead, not so much to this fall & senior year, but the more immediate summer.

I am on antibiotics for the next month. The NHS & their incompetence can bite me.

Ruth Padel just won Professor of Poetry of Oxford, and Carol Ann Duffy was named Britain's new Poet Laureate last week. The first time in the history of either position that a woman was ever named. Exciting or infuriating? Both, maybe. Still, England redeems itself somewhat.

I need a good story idea.

"the writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us"

I am hopeless at updating when I say I will. I know this, you know this, it is what it is. So with that in mind, in the past three weeks since term began (three weeks already, fuck) I have...gone to the Exeter Ball, seen Martin Sheen speak at the Oxford Union, gone to the Keble Ball, celebrated Minnie's 20th birthday in style, taken a trip to the fabulous John Radcliffe emergency room, gone to Dublin, submitted my senior thesis proposal, figured out my summer plans, celebrated Mayday, attended Wadstock....there's always something.

Reading Borges while hopped up on multiple antihistamines is a strange experience. I hate that I feel like I lost so much of this week, because I already feel like the days are flying by. But what can you do. At least my tutors were sympathetic. I always manage to get shit done. But yes. Borges. Bizarre dreams of waking and not waking--or not being able to wake up, and freaking out about that. I wish I had been able to absorb more of what I read; as it is, I feel like I just got a cursory idea. He likes mind games, paradoxes, cowards and heroes. The idea of what happens when the last person to witness anything dies. What you lose. Labyrinths, the idea of it all being a fiction, one choice determining another--or us already being other's predetermined choices. The idea of what if none of it is real, or if it all is. Very metaphysical, and hard to discuss when you don't feel all that lucid.

It's so weird that back in the States, everyone is almost done.

I wanted to say, "take a chance on me. I'm worth it."

But life isn't like that, is it? No.

"clear liquor and cloudy-eyed, too early to say goodnight"

I realize it has been an absurdly long time since I last updated this blog, and to any faithful readers I still have left out there--(that means you, Jeff, and Bri) I apologize. Traveling for a month will do that, and now that I've been back in Oxford for a proper week, I'm only now getting around to writing.

When I last left off (over a month ago, eek!) I had written about Paris and Nice. Here's the summation of the rest of my European travels around the Continent.

March 24th--Getting out of Nice was a shitshow, but I guess you can't win them all. Up at 5 am to make a 630 train back to Paris in order to make a 12 noon train to Geneva. Falling in the shower, bruising my tailbone literally black and blue. Paris was cold, windy, and a dust storm took over the gardens of the Louvre. What was pretty: our hostel, a 12th century monastery turned into 17th century aristocratic residence; Paris in the rain, the glow of the lamplights on wet street corners; stumbling upon Les Deux Magots; two hours in a cafe resting our legs, our alcove, the nuns in their habits, cherry blossoms, window shopping at Dior; hot chocolate and croissants.

You meet interesting people in these kinds of hostels: a photography student from Holland, two Americans studying at Bristol, a Zimbabewean soldier who works for Mugabe but also clears landmines. "What do you go to school for?" he asks me. "Writing," I say, and for some reason it sounds so privileged, so empty. Though of course it isn't. But I need to be doing something with it. It should be important. Not something frivolous. I need more life experience. I need stories to tell. "You don't talk much," he says. "I listen," I answered.

March 29--
Switzerland was: Annasy--a town that looked like Belle's village in Beauty and the Beast come to life. Amy's sprained ankle. Gelato, Italian schoolchildren, our first glimpse of the Alps. An impulse buy of a black wide brimmed sunhat like something out of Gigi. Perfect weather for two more days. Lakes bigger than anything I've ever seen. Wood oven pizza, Tuscany style. The Olympic museum. Hostel dinners; the most expensive drink I've ever ordered. The Old City of Geneva; jasmine tea; the view of the rooftops from the cathedral; a carousel playing the theme from Gone with the Wind; Dutch boys; Kazakh girls; a rowdy gang of British Punjabi guys in their late twenties who invite us to stay up and drink with them; three franc bottles of wine; Swiss chocolate; a cabaret. Orange cinnamon tea. Kim & Victoria. A stop over in a mostly deserted Zurich train station on our way to Italy. Crowded trains and old Italian men who help you with your bags.

Como is wet, cold, beautiful, in a Mediterranean sort of way. We've had almost perfect weather for two weeks, so I know I shouldn't complain, but I wish it had held out for us--it would have been gorgeous--these Italian villages dusted around the like, with the Alps in the background. Bellagio, the basilica, fishing boats, the massive villa. The cafe packed with bedraggled American tourists--the woman who just got her MFA from Bennington in poetry and teaches creative writing at community colleges in L.A, has spent a month traveling Italy, teaching writing in backwater German towns. Edits an online literary journal she gave me the name of and told me to submit to. A hot young waiter from Casablanca who spoke English, Arabic, French, Italian. The old Italian man who had lived in Bellagio all his life, who had, as Amy said, a certain je ne sais quoi. Who was part Uruguayan, who taught languages, who guessed our ages. Who passed a tourist guide into our hands, said of Bellagio, "This is my life," who told us to come back to Italy. The men who said "beautiful girl" as I walked past. A cozy hostel run by an Italian family with two little boys; they played board games every night in the common room. A Lebanese cook who flirts with the girls; postcards from all over the world on all the walls. People writing to keep in touch, to let them know--someone know--they were here. A guitarist from Holland who tours with the Dutch version of American Idol; the residudally stoned hippy nurse from Palm Beach who traveled the world; the art student from Wisconsin studying in Florence. So many people you meet when you travel. It feels like we left Oxford a long time ago--it seeems very far away right now.

April 3--
I miss...my mother. My brother. My own bed. Sharing a shower with four people instead of ten. Privacy. Personal space. Sleeping in. Sleeping through the night. Traveling is harder than I thought it would be. I'm grateful for all the opportunities it has presented but I'm sick of hostels, sick of making five, seven, twelve different agendas mesh. I want to go sit in a square and people watch for hours. Wander through musuems at a leisurely space. Strike off on my own but feel comfortable doing so. I think I'm probably just overtired.

April 5--
Italy was: the first moments of giddiness at seeing the canals of Venice; of feeling elation at actually being here, in this weirdly mythical city. Of it all being real. Winding streets where maps are useless and "you walk in the general direction of where you need to go." Anti-Bush graffitti scrawled on walls in the student quarter; paper machie masks and quill-tipped pens and rare manuscripts. Throngs of tourists; the Rialto bridge; an excursion to Murano and its glassblowers; a nap alongside a canal; gelato every night; a local Venetian restaurant and four bottles of wine; a Sarah Lawrence crowd--Amy, Fayyaz, Ashley, Matt, Molly; an orphanage of a youth hostel, in a rundown mansion with no heat, and a twenty five year old German chick and nineteen year old Mexican kid running the whole damn thing. A party every night; communal breakfasts; drinks mixed so strong I could only manage one. The Peggy Guggeinheim museum; San Marco square; gondoliers; so much surface glitter and "display only." Music, of course--as rich in that sense as Vienna is. Amazingly decadent, but without much of a pulse.

Rome was: Sun and piazzas; the Trevi fountain; the Pantheon and the Roman forum. Gelato all the time. Lazy park-filled Sunday afternoons. Crap limoncello, the Coliseum, Vatican City--the Sistine Chapel, School of Athens, the Swiss Guard. All that power is frightening--I'm not religious by nature, but even if I was, I don't think I'd find anything spiritual about that place. It's designed for intimidation; a show of wealth, not spirit. Sunsets on the Spanish steps; a search for the Medici villas, and, of course, the tremors of the earthquake. For some reason, I found the mix of the ancient and the cosmopolitan rather jarring; I enjoyed the feel of the city--that it did feel like a proper city--but I couldn't get past feeling as if I was in a stage set somehow; I wonder if Athens, equally ancient, would feel that way too. Maybe not, as their buildings were always designed for the aesthetic as well as the power. Rome cared more about power even then..

About this time I ceased writing in the hardback journal I brought with me, so lets see if I can conjure up Vienna, Prague, and Amsterdam from memory tomorrow. It will be back to regularly scheduled blog postings now. Really it will. None of this not-for-a-month nonesense! Yup.

Much love.

Paris, je t'aime

My internet access this past week of traveling has been, as I expected, rather sporadic, so I've been writing in the journal I've brought with me. This blogpost will be pretty much transcribed from my journal entries, so apologies in advance if the writing is a bit prosaic--my time online is ticking away at two euro for thirty minutes. So here goes.

March 18, 2009

Today I have...picnicked in front of the Eifel tower. Walked from the Arch de Triumph to Notre Dame. Seen the Mona Lisa. Taken a nap in the gardens of the Louvre. Drank wine in the Latin Quarter. Walked along the Seine as the sun set. Got hit on in a charming fashion by old French men. Added a note of my own to those left in the nooks of Shakespeare & Company (and it really was the bookstore of my dreams), paraphrased from a story I skimmed in the Paris Review in Blackwells before I left Oxford: "a journey doesn't always begin the moment you step foot out the door. Sometimes it begins far away from home.' I will come back." Nothing very profound--I couldn't think of anything truly profound to add--not like the letter written to Anne Frank about how she lived on in the dreams of man, how her words, unlike so many that came before her, will never be forgotten. Not like the owner of Shakespeare & Company, who wrote that Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were more real to him than his neighbors; that he was still searching for his own Natasha; about peace; about tragedy, about every day failures and triumphs.

I could have added "I am happy." That would have been true.

You know, Barbara was right--I didn't really appreciate Spain at the time--or I did intellectually, in the sense that I knew my mother was spending time and money to be with me, but sentimentally, not as much as later. I wish I would have enjoyed it more--that I wasn't so irritable and jetlagged, that I appreciated exactly where I was, which, only months later, seems like the remnants of a dream--the streets of of Madrid, flamenco shows and tapas bars, the squares at night, the parks, the techos, Grenada, the Alhambra--one of the wonders of the world. Avila and Segovia and Toledo. But at least later I will be able to say "my mother and I spent a week in a four star mansion in Sevilla; we watched flamenco and saw the Alhambra, and she moved me into Oxford." I really miss her. Jens' house is gorgeous--I would love to have a house like that some day-with balconies and terrace doors and a window seat; white and wood and brightly colored plates, fresh bread every morning, flowers on all the tables. But I really miss my mother. Even not talking to her for two days is hard. I am so closely tied to her.

Paris is beautiful. A city you should explore in depth. I wish I spoke French. How will I ever do justice writing about it now that I've seen it it? It both is and isn't what I imagined--maybe it isn't because what I imagine is a city that simply doesn't exist anymore. The one that does is more earthy, more vibrant.

I am sunburnt, my feet ache, and I overpacked. But I am in Europe, living my life. I am here. I am so thankful for that.

I want to see Paris when I'm in love, and I want to see it when I'm settled. I want to know this city in all its forms. I want to come back.


March 20, 2009

Today was Versailles, which was closed (disappointing! 2 days out of the year they probably close and today would have to be one of them!) so we walked around the gardens instead, which although lovely, didn't quite ease the disappointment. Nothing was in bloom--the wrong season--and all the statues were covered. Still, the oppulence of the palace itself was evident from the facade alone. What must it have been like to live there...

The Paris metro was on strike, so we walked for about twenty minutes in search of another station which dropped us off at Montparnasse--haunt of a good many of the writers I love. We saw the local cemetery, where I payed homage to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvouir (leaving my metro stub, like so many people before me), saw the Catacombs, though I had a total panic attack once I emerged, and the Closeries de Lilas, the favorite cafe of Hemingway (he wrote most of the Sun Also Rises there), Fitzgerald, and Trotsky. It was beautiful--a garden terrace, lilacs everywhere, the interior wood paneled, masculine. We drank champagne and ate chocolate in the gardens of Luxembourg, had dinner overlooking the Seine at twilight--wine, baguettes, brie--and I got a text from Ben saying he would love to get together for more than an hour next time, once I return to Oxford.

Trying to find a train running back to Jens', we walked down the Champs-Elysee at night, and saw the Eifel tower all lit up. I can see why they say Paris is the city of light. I think its hte most beautiful place I've ever been.

March 22, 2009

Nice was...the French Riviera; strawberry tarts and gelato, wood oven pizza and three spoon ice cream sundaes. The bluest water, winding alleyways, sundresses and winter coats. The Matisse museum--his former villa, high above the city, all terracotta and white walls, a local park on a Sunday afternoon, with a carousel playing Disney songs in French. Naps on the sun-warmed rocks of the beach, a clean and sparse hostel, croissants and honey, pulsing marketplaces--a pale pink pashmina and a bright pink tote. Echoes of Athens and Sevilla, of the Mediterreanean. Of women in black slips, high heels, wide sunhats. Watching the planes land over the beach--a strange feeling of euphoria and sadness. I can't believe a week has gone by already. I'm so in love with France. Maybe that's what I'll do this summer, when I'm busy not finding a job. Intern a day at week at Sterling Lord in the city, cozy up to my GRE prep book, learn French, write regularly, read.

Walking down the waterfront, I realized how perfectly content I was. So far this spring break has consisted of wandering through gorgeous cities, eating, and napping in picturesque locations. Couldn't ask for anything more.

"The day's last one way ticket train pulls in"

Another term has ended--wonderful & bittersweet. My last fiction tutorial was a bit odd--she was distracted by personal issues, which I understood, but it was a bit disconcerting in any event. She told me she had no doubt my talent "would always be guided--and not necessarily by a person either" Alright, I said. What else do you say to that? She also advised me to be wary of working in the publishing industry for a career--that it might exhaust me; sap me dry. Editors don't write books, she said. Maybe there is some truth in that. But if I didn't do that to earn money, I don't know what I would do. "I love photography," I told her. Then work in an art gallery was her response. But I hardly have the qualifications for that. It's a long way off, still.

Friday was...crepes at the French market at Gloucester Green, running into Amy & Sara (who is here visiting, before heading to Paris with me and Amy) & Fayyaz outside the Vaults & Gardens, Spice Lounge for dinner, basking in the sunshine. The Oxford Union for cocktails & the Wadham bop. Getting all the cash out of my wallet stolen; meeting Jeff's golf boys, wondering how on earth will I go back to the States/Sarah Lawrence after this year? There is nothing quite like Oxford..I don't know where else in the world you get this particular conflation of academia & exuberant debauchery; the work hard-play hard dynamic but with this total passion underneath.

Yesterday was London--walking the South Bank, which was beautiful, taking Sara to Westminster, and St. James Park, hot chocolate and belgian waffles in a cafe; a coffee date with a cute Brit who had told Jeff I had "interesting eyes." It would be nice if it came to something next term, but if not, at least it was another experience.

Today was laundry all day, 60 degree weather, packing for my month long travels. Tomorrow will be spent running last minute errands and simply enjoying Oxford. I leave Tuesday morning for Paris, and won't be back to the UK until April 14th. I'm sure I will have so much to write about when I do.

I despise people who feel the need to drink and drive. They always would make us watch those videos and sit through those lectures in middle school health classes, all school assemblies, and drivers ed. They'd bring in women from MADD, or guys in their late twenties horribly deformed by major car accidents, and maybe they'd scare the shit out of you for the hour, or even the afternoon. Maybe it would seem totally hokey, maybe you just wouldn't even think about it. I probably leaned towards the first and then fell into the last.

Talking to my mother on the phone just now, she told me about this email she got from Connecticut College, where my twin brother goes to school, though he's in Beijing currently, studying there for the semester. A girl he knew, a girl he was friends with through the humanitarian work they both did for Africa--him for Darfur, her for Uganda--was killed this morning, on her way to Uganda with six other kids from my brother's grade at Connecticut College. A 23 year old guy coming the wrong way down the highway slammed into the van that was taking all the kids to the airport for their aid mission. He was totally fine.

I don't know anything else about the girl. But it infuriates me nonetheless. I started crying when I got off the phone, and I couldn't even tell you why, except it would probably be why I cry over any of these things, from Eve Carson to any of the school shootings. It is always needless and tragic and horrible no matter what the age of the people involved. But someone your own age, someone you could have conceivably hung out with, had classes with, even just vaguely knew. Someone who was just beginning to go places, who was doing such good. And to be killed like that, over someone else's stupidity? What do you even say? That's why they have those assemblies, that's why they try to scare the shit out of you. I've sat in the passenger seat of cars of friends who had a few drinks hours before we leave the bar, taking backroads to avoid cops and random breathalyzers, bemoaning the Fairfield police. But that's why.

Everyone's got a story like this, though. Hopefully you aren't just working against the tide.

"What I want is to be told that this is solid and that it means something"

It's starting to feel like spring. Sunny & warm(er) than its been for months. I'm getting restless. Craving things I'm not actually sure I want, just sure that I want something. Amy & I leave for Europe in two and a half weeks. Time goes by. There's still so much to be done--essays to write, preparations to be made. All I want (well, not all) is seventy degrees & sun dresses; long, long hair again. A stack of books I keep meaning to read. Vodka & lemonade. Simple stuff.

This week I saw both Jane Goodall & Ruth Padel, the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin speak. Both were amazing--these phenomenal, captivating, spirited older women who have done such interesting, important things. Goodall was quieter, passionate but even-tempered. Wiser, somehow. Padel--witty, acerbic, her poetry brilliant. I never really think of science as being beautiful--I never really think of science at all--but it's true; her friend was right. The attention to detail; the precision required, it's all the same. It is vital you teach that in schools, vital you engage children with it, vital for lots of reasons. She's up for Professor of Poetry, Padel, and I signed up to volunteer the day of the elections. It could be quite interesting--the people you'd see.

My fiction tutorial takes place in my tutor's study, and this week we were interrupted by a phone call, and a quite intimate one at that. Her mother is in the hospital, suffering from dementia, on her "last lap" as my tutor put it, and sitting there, staring fixedly out the window, wanting to seem invisible as she talked to various doctors, I had to blink back tears, fight away thoughts of my own grandmother and a similiar situation. "I'm so sorry," I said when she got off the phone, but what else do you say? There's no place for commiseration, really. She took a breath, picked up my story, dived back in. Compartmentalize. You compartmentalize. I used to be quite good at that. These days, less and less.

There has been a lot of 'future' talk as of late--planning for senior year, planning for graduate school, planning even for after that. I have to remind myself to stay in the present, to not constantly compare myself to my mother, to what she had accomplished at my age. 21 and about to graduate from Yale, about to marry my father. A year later, juggling Columbia & a waitressing position at a shit Howard Johnson's in the Village. Then five years in Greece under the military junta, not seeing her parents for five years, just phone calls at Christmas. A doctorate after that; lots of things after that. Though maybe no one gets the future they think they'll have. It's never perfect, is it?

Still. There are things I want to do, lots of things. I want to have my own adventures. My own accomplishments. I already do, I know, but there are fears I need to overcome. "Submit," my tutor keeps telling me. "Send things out. You're good. You can be published." And yet I don't--not to anything besides Oxford & Sarah Lawrence literary magazines--because I'm not sure how good I actually am. I stumbled upon my tutor's blog, and she wrote about me--called me a rising star. Of course it doesn't matter what anyone says, if I don't actually do these things. Take risks. I'm learning, really.

I've been eating too much crap lately. Now I'm leaning towards early mornings, fruit & yogurt, meandering walks. I guess that's what happens when you live on pizza & oatmeal, late nights & later mornings. Your body starts to rebel. I bank on the fact that really, I've always been small & thin, but even so, I could do with a change. Even now though, it's hard to fight against that troublesome instinct to cut back entirely when I feel things getting out of hand. "You are not the same girl then as you were now. That's a good thing"--Amy, of course.

Katie & I had a long heart-to-heart a few days ago. I'm really glad I'm living where I'm living; of the people that I get to share this experience with.

"You've got to own your own days & name them, each one of them, every one of them, or else the years go right by & none of them belong to you" --That might be my new goal.

Went on a search for a swingset last Saturday, when, like today, the weather was beautiful. Was unsuccessful on that front, but spent a lovely hour wandering around Jericho, which I had yet to explore. I'm looking forward to roaming Oxford & London in the days before and after my European adventures.

What else has happened? A pancake party for 'pancake day' last Tuesday--English and American style; tea with Roxy; Revolutionary Road with Rand, which I enjoyed, though it doesn't exactly make you long for Connecticut--I kept explaining to people afterwards, that really, it's not like that, I promise. Taboo & wine with the Williams boys; dinner tomorrow with the Williams girls. Drinks last night with the Williams boys. Emma's birthday party today. Balls next term. I need to find an actual gown. My hair is now dark red & I'm in the middle of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin. Bath on Friday. London the week after that.

Drink, work, sleep. Bask in the sun. Flirtatiousness & debauchery. Life is as usual.


My next entry will not be so long--or after so much of an absence. Really. Promise.

"step, step right over the line and onto borrowed time"

Jeff, this entry is for you, since, as you pointed out last night (and with all due sincerity) it has been two weeks since my last blog post, and isn't it about time I write something?

Lets see. There was major emotional turmoil two weeks ago, arising from two different situations, which ultimately gave rise to some interesting conversations, including one which will be the discussion topic at WomCam next week--female solidarity.

I continue to enjoy my fiction tutorial, though I've discovered now, in order to generate ideas I need to get out of the flat, walk, be around people. Otherwise the day just slips by stagnantly and I start to go a little nuts.

I read Virginia Woolf's The Waves last week, and I adored it. It might be the first thing I've read all year that really, truly resonated with me on a deeper level than just surface admiration for the complexity of the prose or the loveliness of a particular sentence (i.e. Tender is the Night or Farewell to Arms). It was also one of those books that you struggle to hold onto after you've finished. It starts to feel like a dream you had months ago, where you thought, for a moment, it all made sense, you had it all figured out, and then the phone rings, the alarm goes off, you wake up and forget what it was exactly you dreamed in the first place. Still. Much of what she ruminated on--at least what I focused on--was art & nature; how you survive; the responsibility one has to one's friends, to one's self; what you lose by distancing yourself from the world--or if that distance is vital. All things I've been thinking about, at one point or another. Bernard, one of the six characters in the novel, and, in some ways, an amalgamation of Woolf herself, is forever the observer, left to record his friend's stories in lieu of his own, because somewhere along the way, he didn't get around to making his own. He was passive, always searching for the "true story," unable to see the beauty in the natural world anymore than he could in a touch between lovers.

I've been considering applying to Oxford directly after I graduate to do a Master's in Literature (1900-Present), though who knows if I would even get in. If I didn't, I would just work for a year, in some aspect of the publishing industry, and even if I did, I'd still apply afterwards to get my MFA. Stay in school, delay the inevitable, I can't give up writing or literature. So why not continue them both, at least for a while. If I can, if it's possible. Anyway. There's a wonderful quote in The Waves which made me feel, for a moment, that the last thing I should do is spend more time in a classroom--that I should be out living, experiencing, crafting my own story (which, I think, I already am):

"that would be a glorious life, to addict oneself to perfection; to follow the curve of the sentence wherever it might lead, into deserts, under drifts of sand, regardless of lures, of seductions; to be poor always and unkempt; to be ridiculous in Piccadilly"

This one too:

“Should I seek out some tree? Should I desert these form rooms and libraries, and the broad yellow page in which I read Catullus, for woods and fields? Should I walk under beech trees, or saunter along the river bank, where the trees meet united like lovers in the water? But nature is too vegetable, too vapid. She has only sublimities and vastitudes and water and leaves. I begin to wish for firelight, privacy, and the limbs of one person”

Valentine's Day was Saturday, and instead of bemoaning the fact that this year I happen to be unattached, I realized, in a fleeting moment in the midst of a delicious spending spree, that this was the first time since I was sixteen years old that I haven't been in a destructive sexual relationship / pseudo-relationship with anyone. Which, I think, is something to be celebrated. I baked brownies, and ate them for dinner, drank strawberry wine coolers while wearing a polka dotted silk slip and massive Lolilta sunglasses, and spent the night with some of my favorite girls, getting drunk off champagne and raspberries and vodka shirley temples, singing along to Celine Dion. All is well.

Europe planning is more complicated than I had foreseen, but in a month from yesterday, Amy and I will be on our way to Paris, then the Riviera, then Geneva, Lausanne, Lake Como, Venice, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam, then back to Paris one month later just as our Eurail passes run out at midnight. How very Cinderella.

I also got in touch with the author of a fantastic manuscript I read this summer, which was then picked up, and is going to be published sometime next year. It's one of those things, where, as the intern, all the difference you make happens behind the scenes--the authors have no idea who's the first to read their manuscript, even though the interns are who make the majority of the intial slush acceptance/rejection decisions, I'd say. It was nice to actually speak up, congratulate her, see how excited she was to hear about me. It felt rather rewarding.

It's hard to believe half the year has gone by. It feels like I'll be here forever (in the best way).

"it looks like rain tonight, and thank god, because a clear sky just wouldn't feel right"

I think you find the little pieces of good in every day & keep going. I think you have to do that. Otherwise, the world is too dark of a place.

I don't understand why these things happen. You can talk them in circles for hours, analyze power dynamics and culture dynamics to death, talk about what it means to be a feminist, what society's definitions of masculinity imply, what responsibilities we owe each other. You can talk about the system and talk about justice, you can talk until there's nothing left to say because you've said it all and you're tired of discussing these things but you still have to because it hasn't gotten any better. Maybe in time. Maybe you keep fighting this fight because someone has to, and someday it will change things, and someday it will get better. You take the small steps and look at the big picture and hope against hope that it will matter.

Maybe you wake up in the morning, after having barely slept, a night not as bad, but close to, the night you had yourself two and a half years ago, and you look outside, at the sun rising, and the patches of snow, burning eyes and head aspin, and you take a breath. Because that's the only thing you can do, that is all you control. You give back what you can, you provide what you can. You look ahead. You slow down, for a moment, for a day, and then you keep going.



I don't know if that's the right thing to do, but it's what you have to do.

My brain is in a fog, I slept three hours later than I had planned, due to being so impossibly hungover I scared the shit out of Amy when she found me unelegantly sprawled on the hallway floor, begging to be put of my misery, and because I started my essay so late, my plans for this afternoon/evening of hanging out with people, and going to Evensong at the University Cathedral in Radcliffe Square are shot as well. And this essay is not going to be good. I enjoyed Tender is the Night, but I can't seem to hold onto a cohesive thread of arguement. I have too much textual evidence to use for an eight page paper, and not enough critical back up. Ugh.

Enough complaining, back to work.

"Sure that this was all and all and all"

"Faces, not flowers," D.H. Lawrence told Clare. It's all about portraits and details, more grit and less beauty. Or maybe just less an outline, more reality. I don't know. It stuck with me; it felt important. Faces, not flowers. My romantic view of the world.

Cari came to visit two weeks ago. It was lovely having her here, before the official start of term, when we could wander the streets and go out for tea, make dinner, drink wine, dress up. All the things we do anyway, but with a relative calm attached. It really is work hard and play hard, she observed. Indeed. So nice, as well, to see the city with a visitor. Oxford is always beautiful--it's impossible to ignore that, even in the cold and the damp and the rain--but sometimes showing it off to someone new reinforces that fact, helps to remind me of where we are. I love the way the buildings around Radcliffe Square look all lit up in the night.

I keep saying there's so much I want to see and do here; that I feel I've barely scratched the surface, both in Oxford and out. So therefore, instead of merely fretting about it, I've decided every weekend I will do something new and adventurous. Alex and Amy--you will be dragged along. I want to see the villages on Oxford's outskirts and wander through the parks. Drink in new pubs, sit in meadows. Walk down streets I've never been. I want to go to London at least once a month. I want to actually do these things and not just say them. I fluctuate between holing up in my flat in sweats, piles of books and bottles of wine for company, sleeping all day and staying up all night, feeling as if we'll be here forever, and panicking over the thought that there's still so much more I want.

"I don't know if I'm having the life changing experience I thought I would be," I confessed to Amy. "You are having a life-changing experience," she affirmed. And you know, that's probably true. I'm past the stage of mere affection for this place, and am starting to fall in love with it. I love my flatmates, I enjoy my tutorials, I'm thrilled about romping around Europe for a month. It is life-changing. Maybe not in the cinematic, in-one-fell-swoop way one might tend to envision things before packing up and leaving home, but in the quiet, more important ways. The ways you learn to sustain yourself, the friendships you make, the day to day experiences you have. I can't wait to see Oxford in the summer, when its warm.

If getting my MFA at Oxford isn't an option, then maybe I'll apply for literature. I feel more at home here, in certain ways, than I ever did in New York.

I will leave you with this, an excerpt of a conversation I had last week over welcome-back-to-Oxford drinks:

Her: "So, what period are writing about for your historical fiction tutorial?"
Me: "The Left Bank in the 20's--the whole expat scene."
Her: "Oh, yeah, yeah I can see it now...So, do you believe in reincarnation?"
Me: "Uhhhhhh."
Her: "Because, now that I look at you, I totally see it. It totally fits. Yeah. Yeah, you were there, and you died young. I don't know of what, but you died young. I don't want to give too much away."
Me: "Uhhh." *gulps wine*


Goodnight.

"greatness is never a given...rather it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things"

Farewell, Bush regime and the eight years of atrocious irresponsibility, heinous judgment, and laugh-so-you-don't-cry soundbites which accompanied you. Here's to hope & change & all the rest.

Watched Obama's inauguration in the Wadham JCR, surrounded by Sarah Lawrence students and Wadhamites alike; it was almost impossible not to be moved by Obama's eloquent, powerful, told-it-like-it-is-but-here's-to-the-promise-of-the-future speech. "This will be the moment that defines a generation," he said. I guess that will come to be true for our generation; not the Clinton years; not the Bush travesty--Obama. That's what our generation will come into--and fingers crossed, four years from now, it will still look as bright as it does right now.

"falling slowly, eyes that know me, and I can't go back"

As predicted, as soon as I actually arrived in Oxford, all the anxiety I was feeling about returning passed. The flight wasn't bad; I was okay mostly, and only panicked a little during takeoff, at which point the woman sitting next to me asked if I was ok, and if I wanted her to take my hand. She did, and we ended up chatting for a while, about authors we both like and places we've been; about my life in Oxford; about hers as an Israeli diplomat living in Moscow for the past year. I never got her name, and she disappeared before I could say goodbye.

It felt ironic, given a conversation I had had while waiting to board in JFK.

Landed at Heathrow around 630 in the morning, then proceeded to drag myself into Oxford by 10, with a splitting headache and thinking only of falling into bed, which I did, for about three hours, before Mark & Jeff roused me, and I set about doing the things that needed to be done--unpacking, food shopping, etc. Alex showed up a few hours later and we headed to the co-op to collect the essentials. The essentials being wine, of course, and the necessary ingredients for our welcome-home-to-the-flat dinner. Watched Gossip Girl at night with the SLC girls next door, then fell into bed around 2; realized I had been up at that point for almost 36 hours straight.

Amy gets back tonight, which will be good. Hopefully Eunice will make it into Oxford from London tomorrow for lunch, and Cari comes as well for two days. Then it's all about work, work, work, this weekend. My evaluations from my tutors were both good--an A from Ballam, A+, surprisingly, from Linda. And now I know what I can improve this term as well. Still, not looking forward to writing that Gertrude Stein essay this weekend. I really think I need to read the last ten pages of Three Lives whilst intoxicated. Need to hit the EFL tomorrow morning to collect sources. Meh. Welcome back, alright. And I know what I'm writing about for my historical fiction tutorial as well--instead of trying to sustain a novella, which didn't quite work for me, I'm going to write invividual vignettes, I think, following the life of a harlequin-turned-picture dealer in the Left Bank in the 20's. Which means, finishing up my Paris research; tracking down images of Picasso's Rose Period, etc. I'm excited.

Now off to do Oxonian Review edits.


This time, I think I actually might be able to leave it all behind.

"And we know it's never simple, never easy, never a clean break"

Had my first major panic attack about leaving last night; took half a Xanax & fell asleep to weird dreams at four in the morning, woke up at one in the afternoon. "You worry too much" Jessie said. Well, yes. About Justin leaving for China in less than forty eight hours, and freaking the fuck out (possibly) when he gets there. We fight more often than not, but he's still my twin, and I've never gone that long without seeing him. And about my mother, here for so long by herself, especially if she's sick, like she's been on and off. Especially if she's lonely.

I keep reminding myself I need to think of this as what it is--an adventure, a learning experience, what I've wanted for so long. It is all of that. I'm also terrified as hell. Despite the fact that I've already spent three months in Oxford, that I have friends there, that I've successfully completed a term. Despite all of that. "I know you're scared," Amy told me before I headed to Heathrow, freaked out about flying transatlantically on my own; about flying at all. "But I'm so proud of you--I know how scared you are--but you came anyway. You came anyway." True enough.

And I still have a week here--if this was back in grade school it would be an entire vacation ahead of me. So what did I do with it?

Well, saw almost everyone I wanted to see, save Holly & Evie in the city, Joanna Ferrell, & some co-workers. Got coffee with Bri, lunch & the movies with Chelz, baked Christmas cookies with the Holland Hill girls, made gingerbread houses with Cari. Went up to Sarah Lawrence, saw my girls. Spent a copious amount of time with Jessie, hanging out, bar hopping, driving around aimlessly. Worked my way through the first season of Felicity, and half a House marathon. Watched all my favorite Christmas specials; saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Marley & Me, Slumdog Millionaire. I want to see Milk & Doubt sometime this week; Revolutionary Road, which I wanted to see the most, especially since they filmed it in Southport, will have to wait til Oxford. Read not a single book. I need to quickly remedy that this week--finish all the historical fiction research I can do here, read Three Lives, etc. Drove down to the beach and sat on the swings to think. Went to Ludlowe, saw the old teachers I go back to confide in. Rang in the New Year with Jessie & Brandon, drunk off too many rum & cokes. Yeah, I drank a lot this break. Was insanely jetlagged the first week I was home, then fell into an anxiety-driven sleep pattern of not falling asleep til three or four then sleeping half the day away.

Had a few dinners with my father. Spent an entertaining afternoon with a Greek notary in Norwalk, since thanks to a will screw-up, my brother and I are now partial owners of an apartment in Athens we weren't due to inherit until after my father passes away. Watched my father & the old Greek man squabble in heightnened Greek. Watched my mother mutter under her breath. Watched a car almost drive into the notary's travel agency.

Started planning spring break with Amy--France with her & Sara; Italy--Venice, Rome, Tuscany; Greece--Athens with my relatives; Prague with Alex; maybe Vienna, Switzerland, Portugal.

Got a drink dumped down my dress by a congenial family friend of Jessie's, who then offered to pay for me the rest of the night. Luckily the dress and my (white) tights survived. Went back to watch a movie with them, was awkwardly groped. Jessie & I fled. Met another guy the week before; we hit it off. But of course I'm leaving. Maybe this summer.

Also had a crisis about what it is I actually want to be--what kind of writer, what I'll be able to sustain, what I have the discipline for. Maybe it isn't what I always assumed it would be. Maybe it's too early to know.

Maybe I just worry too much.