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.