eponymous

Virginia

Is a name invented for a

New land in a New World, and named for her:

The Tudor Rose.

Power made untouchable through purity.

Elegance, I think, and composed charm,

And perhaps the well-mannered ease of the Old South.

Ginger,

by contrast,

is an ugly root: bulbous and pungent

And good for nausea, apparently.

But it can also mean mettle—“sass,” some might say.

Not quite brazen. Cheeky, perhaps, or spirited:

Leavening conversation with a sprinkling of spice.

I am never sure which one I am

or which one I want to be. 

(assignment: write a poem about your name.)

sinking city

Venice

by day is bright and cramped. The crowd

of sweaty tourists seeps through tangled streets, loud

and greedy. Sundown, and they are gone, by train or boat.

They leave their rubbish and refuse. It floats

in the canals and blankets the flagstone streets.

At night,

San Marco is quiet and cool.

Forgotten laundry flutters, and moonlight pools

on the wavering water. Empty gondolas thud

against each other, and out of the mud

under bridges, rats surface to see the stars.

(assignment: constrained syllables. compare the corresponding lines in each stanza.)

con estasi soave

I think I was made for music—

            that, coiled around my bones and

            clenched in my muscles, are

                        melodies

            taut and tense.

I think I was made for music. but

I can’t be sure.

I am silent, static.

until you

cradle me to your shoulder, and

press me to your cheek, and

lift your bow to hover above my veins—taut, tense—

a breath.

then a slippery scrape: like rosined horsehair over bright strings

and

music

quivers through my blood vessels. back again, and

vibrato thrums over my skin; again, and I am

surging, swelling, soaring.

I am static and silent

but you make me sing.

the title: a musical notation; italian for "with gentle ecstasy."

Gone

(assignment: write about something you’ve never experienced.)

My tongue feels too big for my mouth, and

Someone else’s fingers prod

My numb lips

Coasters

Where are the coasters? I forgot to use one

I press the glass to my face, but the condensation

Is long since gone I exhale

and swipe my tongue through the film of fog

Fingerprints! No matter

The liquid will be warm, but it is brown

and I think will burn the itch in my throat

My lips buzz

Has gravity always been down?

On Facing The Reality of Leaving

As the tradition goes, I’m feeling the most inspired to blog when I have the least time to do it and other needs are far more immediately pressing. Exactly twenty-four hours from right now (3:41 PM), I will be pushing my bicycle out of the Vines’s bike shed and up the gravel slope that leads to the driveway, then whooshing down the hill and pedaling to Norham Gardens for my C.S. Lewis tutorial. And, as of right now (3:44 PM), I have not a single original word written on my essay.

For the past few weeks, it’s been difficult to focus on academics—even to focus on enjoying Britain, England, Oxford, and the Vines—because I feel crushed under the pressing weight of everything I’m about to lose. Because, twenty-four hours and two weeks from right now (3:47 PM), I will, geographically, be somewhere over the Atlantic, but more significantly, flying away from Oxford. Everything tells me that the short-term nature of my time here should have sharpened its sweetness, and perhaps it has; perhaps, if my stay were more permanent, I soon would grow indifferent to the narrow little cobblestoned alleyways and the charming post boxes and the weathered spires of the colleges and churches. Perhaps I would tire of everything (huge paned windows with sills wide enough to sit on, leather couches to sit in and not on, and, beyond words I am capable of forming, the people) about the Vines. Perhaps. I doubt it.

It seems impossible for me to focus on C.S. Lewis and Shakespeare and, yes, even you, Jane Austen when I don’t know when (or even, heaven forbid, if) I’ll ever see Sarah, or Hannah, or Jonathan again. Sarah and I went to a Christmas crafts fair at our little church on Friday night and, in the midst of stitching felt flowers and birds, a lady, noting our non-English accents, asked where we were from. “Arkansas, I said, “in the South,” while Sarah answered, “Canada, actually—Ontario.” The woman laughed. “Practically opposite ends, then!” She didn’t mean any harm, and she didn’t do any, but she did probe (unknowingly) an already-aching hurt.

Considering that—to my knowledge—nearly everyone who reads this blog is at home in America, this will not be a pleasant post to read. All I can say is that I’m sorry for my gratuitous whining about leaving, but please note that my sadness is because of the leaving Oxford, not because of the coming home. Loving England hasn’t lessened my love for America. Perhaps, in the aforementioned theoretical situation in which I came to England permanently, and my return to America wasn't a sure thing, secured in a pre-booked flight, I would long for America in the same way I long for Oxford even before I’ve left it. And it isn’t precisely that I don’t want to fly home for family and friends and Christmas two weeks from tomorrow; it’s that I know I can never, ever come back.

Oh, certainly, with the time and money, I can book a flight to Heathrow, pop on the Tube and step off at the Oxford City Centre any time I please. But I can never enter this moment again. This semester is, I think, best explained when encapsulated into a single moment. I can have a drink in the Eagle and Child or go see Wycliffe Hall or, yes, go back to the Vines, but the moment will have passed—the dear old house I want to call “mine” will belong to new students, and even I will be different. I know that even I, by then, will have changed, and it will be normal and even healthy that I will not love Oxford and the Vines in the same way that I do now. Logically, I know this. But I’m terrified for this moment to end, and I know I’m helpless to stop it from ending. I want to make the most of the moment before it slips past. I want to gorge myself on Oxford. I want to wander down High Street looking up at the stars and ride the bus into town alone, lights flashing by outside my window, and I want to play the card games I haven’t made the time to play and I want to have a tremendous Christmas carol sing-a-long around the Vines keyboard; I want to drink PG Tips with milk and sugar in one of the good mugs and talk about feminism or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or political philosophy; I want to love purely and without waste in the time I have left.  

How can I possibly write about the symbol of the veil in Till We Have Faces when I feel so overcome by the need to not waste the last of my Oxford moment?

Current time: 4:41 PM. Twenty-three hours until tutorial.

Fifteen days until home.

Home for Christmas

     Twilight is falling over Headington.

   The streetlights have come on, and store displays shine out over the street. A young woman cycles past the almost-deserted Starbucks where I am; she’s bundled up in a scarf and mittens, and I feel even cosier in the dim amber lighting. My macchiato is long cold, but Billie Holliday whisper-croons through my headphones, and I feel a little shiver of sheer joy. I can almost taste it: the arrival of the holiday season, and that particular magic it brings to night-time in the city.

     I can almost taste the holiday season, not exploding onto supermarket shelves and window displays, but creeping out slowly: it is the warm autumn sun glimmering on red-and-gold-and-brown leaves, wet on the pavement as I pedal hard through the crisp air; it is the taste of pumpkin and nutmeg in the muffins I made from Mom’s recipe (almost like home but not quite, like everything in England); it is soft sweaters and mittens and the homey warmth of a scarf around my neck; it is 1940s Christmas music playing (only through my headphones, because it isn’t socially acceptable to play Christmas music yet, but I still take a quiet comfort in listening alone, anyway).

     I think I expected that summer fading and mellowing into autumn and, in turn, chilly autumn days portending frosty winter ones would make me even more homesick. After all, we so often associate the holiday season with home and loved ones that, I feared, the anticipation of Christmas might feel stale and hollow. But I think the opposite is happening. I haven’t run away from the holiday season; the holiday season has come to me in Oxford, and it feels oh-so-much like home.

I Have Confidence in Sunshine

Clearly, good intentions of regular blogging have fallen to the wayside as my academic Oxford career has accelerated. Perhaps “fallen to the wayside” is too passive a metaphor—“ripped to bloody, mangled carcasses by the savage attacks of academia” might be more accurate.

A quick and dull summation of what I’ve been doing: Monday-Friday, I get up hopefully by 7:30 (but usually at 8:00) in order to bike into the SCIO offices by 9:30. We’ve been progressing through a series of documentaries by Simon Schama called “A History of Britain,” each segment of which lasts an hour. 10:30 is tea. At 11:00 we have a lecture—a few of my favourites have been on English perceptions of the Revolutionary War, John Locke and his philosophy, and women writers from the Restoration up to Jane Austen. Noon is the long-awaited lunchtime.

Technically after that, we’re free for the day—but of course, no one is really free. It’s our assigned case studies that have really been keeping me busy. The case studies are essentially 2,000- to 2,500-word research papers in which we choose from a list of questions about British history, literature, philosophy, et cetera, and make an argument to answer the question. My first question, due last week, was:

1.      “The women of the Arthur legend proved more problematic for later interpreters than did the men.”

And yes, you smart-alecks, I realize that technically that wasn’t a question. We have the next two case studies due next week—a very sneaky act on the part of our professors to fool us into thinking we have more time to write than we actually do, if you ask me.

What’s that you say? Are you insinuating that I’m writing this blog post as a form of procrastination?

…I can neither confirm nor deny that theory.

Next two questions I’m working on are:

2.      Are Shakespeare’s women representative of his age?

and

3.      Do screen adaptations of Austen betray her writing or, as Butler has claimed, signify its universality?

I realize that looking at all of these questions together makes me look like a blazing feminist. Hmm. Draw your own conclusions.

Basically, writing one of these suckers means a lot of thinking, a lot of writing, and a lot of reading.  A LOT of reading. The nature of the questions is really quite subversive—you think it’ll be fairly easy to answer and then as you’re researching, before your eyes, it mutates into this monstrous task. So many definitions to nail down and clarifications to make. It’s like Hercules and the Hydra.

The good news is that it doesn’t seem insurmountable. Difficult, sometimes excruciating, yes—but doable. I feel especially good after receiving my first case study evaluation back yesterday. I had been so nervous about the silly thing. I even had a nightmare that Oxford graded on a 14-point scale and I was awarded a 2. While my actual grade will remain a mystery until the end of term (a terrifying prospect for those of us who are extremely grade-motivated), I received some great feedback.

No, Ginger, you didn’t just get here by some fluke. If you work hard, you can compete academically.

[DULL SCHOLARLY REPORT ENDS HERE]

Overall, I’ve been surprised by my lack of homesickness. I had expected that the Missing would be an overwhelming longing for everything, and it isn’t at all. It’s strange, little things. I miss seeing Lydia’s volleyball games. I miss JBU chapel. I miss driving in the car blasting music with Luke and trying to pitifully hold up my end of a philosophical conversation with Kyle. I miss choir more than I ever anticipated.

Lately, I’ve had this peculiar longing lately for Christmas. I know it’s not even October yet, but I want to decorate a tree and listen to Nat King Cole Christmas albums and be a part of that mysterious Something Bigger in choir as we learn unspeakably beautiful Latin pieces for Candlelight. Christmas merchandise is beginning to trickle onto the shelves at Tesco. Today I caught a glimpse of some kitschy Santa Claus candy and felt such an instantaneous, visceral longing for home and family that I almost felt dizzy.

The moment came and went, and I emerged from the fluorescent grey light of Tesco and into the rare Oxford sunshine. Hopping on my bike to begin the long trek home, I felt that inner glow of knowing that everything will be okay, that I can do more than just survive this semester; I can thrive and learn and grow. I have confidence in sunshine, yes, but I also have confidence in me.