The place is impossible to describe.
So much simultaneous reality exists here, that attempting a coherent description feels a bit like trying to explain all the meanings of a constellation or celestial phenomenon. It is a thing that has been discovered, interpreted and imagined so differently and so many millions of times, I'm amazed the buildings don't just give up and collapse under the weight of all the things that have been said and told and imagined about them. It must be exhausting, actually, to be Oxford. Such a small place, but making up in imaginative density whatever it lacks in size. Love it, hate it, or ignore it as you will, the incredible unreality of the place can't be denied. After a couple thousand years of continual intellectual and imaginative excavation, of being combed through and through by all the fine-tooth combs of all the visitors and scholars, what else could be expected but a slow and steady slide into the incomprehensible, unreal, and indescribable?
So, I won't try to tell you about Oxford. You'll just have to go and imagine it for yourselves.
And in a way, there isn't much to tell about my last 10 days there, except that they were (like Mary Poppins) practically perfect in every way. I had forgotten, I think, that I have a pretty much fully functioning life waiting for me there, with many lovely and often ridiculously impressive people to see and talk things over with over tea, or coffee, or any number of delicious things that are really bad for me and really, really good. A life that, I now perceive, was even fuller than I realized while living it every day (of course). Distracted as I was by... well... learning things, and by the unnecessary stress of worrying that I wasn't making the most of my time.
Being a former student is, I now see, a better way to experience the true Oxonian's Oxford. Hanging one's hat there for a while as a traveler and a dilettante (without the burdensome distraction of actual study or scholarly exertion) is just the thing, I suspect, that Oxford was designed for. Despite its claims of being a serious institution of higher learning, I think (maybe not now, but for much of its history, and on this trip, for me) Oxford might be better described as a serious institution of higher dabbling. Some would even say 'procrastinating,' but I think the non-work being done at Oxford deserves a more flattering title. It is perfectly acceptable, in other words, when someone asks you what you are doing, to gently slip a leaf out from Christopher Robin's book and say "Oh, nothing," while wandering away into the University Parks, or drifting down the river on a punt. 'Nothing' is a very much respected activity in some Oxford circles, and it is certainly practiced to perfection among the graduate students in the English faculty.
And now, sitting at Briana Harper's desk in her lovely apartment in Brooklyn, I am searching for a way to draw this teensy little project to a close. Here, in the borough where it was born, I see the extreme Spanish tan already fading from my toes, and look over at all the traveller's loot spilling from the suitcase I was forced to buy yesterday in London (the backpack lasted through almost everything, but packed with cider, olive oil, and honey as it was, I just couldn't bring myself to check it unprotected onto an international flight).
And, even as I wrap things up and put them away, I'm sure I'll make use of this space in the future, as I have more semi-exciting things to report. I will, after all, be moving to California in August, and no doubt there will be some describing to do.
But until then, I am so very happy to abandon this awkward and incomplete mode of communication, to release myself from the strange world of the blog, and to hop on the subway (and in two weeks, on another plane home) and come and see you. For REAL. At last.
All my love,
Amelia
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