The Breathing Space Between Hilary and Trinity

My mood at the moment: lustful. I lust for longer days, warmer evenings, summer dresses. I lust for new clothes (I spend hours at the computer, clicking photographs of things I can't afford). I lust for the glow of inspiration to sparkle into a frenzy of of productivity. And by wanting this so much, I stay stuck (it's the trickery of Spring).

The city has emptied herself again, tipped the students out, and we see who is left. "The arselickers who stayed," Philip Larkin called them (called us). But all I can think is that now that they are gone I will go to the Bodleian and get lost amongst the books.

Suddenly Monday nights are blank in a good way, they are quiet again, and as I glide wraithlike down the High street under eleven o'clock darkness there might be no one but me in all the city, no one but me and the lonely kebab vendor, in his cloud of grease and chip smells, no one but me and the lonely kebab vendor and the ghosts crawling over the college walls, frolicking in the gardens while they can.

(The Man gets home late, I hear him undressing and the birds starting to wake simultaneously; he slips into bed beside me while the night is melting into morning, and our window is wide open).

I forget how still Jericho is. On Plantation Road I lean against the curb with my bicycle, so warm I've shed even my cardigan, and wait for a few minutes just to feel the sun and the stillness. Later a friend and I sit in the garden with a bottle of strong beer between us, chasing a pool of sunshine to the edge of the grass. It's like a wilderness this far away from the house, hugging the brambles coming over the fence.

We talk of Africa. I haven't been to Africa, I almost say, but the truth is that I have. I forget that I have; the Africa I've been to is smoky, spicy, sultry in the way I imagine the Middle East to be (but how would I know?). Not the Africa I used to dream about. But then, we all have different Africas, maybe; and I think about how complicated our relationship with place is, anyway, how much love and experience it takes to get to the root of it.

Later I meet the Man for a drink; we should go back to Fés soon, he says, apropos of nothing, nothing but the strange exhilaration which has overtaken everyone now that the weather is turning warm again. Is it really only the warmth, the clarity of light, that makes us believe in the glory of the future, the adventure of a summer, again?

Funny, I think.

Midmarch

On the way to work, sudden blossoms. They came overnight. First the delicate yellow flowers outside our front door, now, on the trees, a bloom of white. It's warm enough to cycle in ballet flats, no socks--that's a good warm, it's all I'd ask of March. Yesterday, we ate lunch outside, in the garden.

With these sudden blossoms comes, too, a sudden remembrance of my love for the city. I hope this infusion of affection seeps into the work I'm doing on the book. The freeze of winter has made me cold about the project, not lacking in theoretical enthusiasm but lacking in the ability to translate thought into word. I've been drawn into myself like a creature curled in its own shell. I wouldn't want to make this malady specific, wouldn't want it to lose its poetry by pinpointing it preciesely, giving it a name, say, Seasonal Affective Disorder. Then again, perhaps it's like the aquisition of a degree: Miranda Ward, GAD, SAD. (Or, indeed, like a Dr. Seuss rhyme).

But I don't think it's like this. I think what I feel in winter is a choice. I like to wrap myself in the cocoon of my own worries, like to hibernate in my study, fretting, picking at my own fingers, sighing, watching the naked trees, thinking that my projects are languishing, my ability shrinking. It makes the transition to Spring sweeter, makes me feel like, as soon as the blossoms come, I can shed my ugly countenance, wear something nicer for the Summer.

I wasn't always like this. I'm a California girl, you see; not obsessed with seasons, not even aware of them except for the changes in light and the subtle shift of colour. I write this often, so it must be important to me. I write, often, too, of how my time in Boston made me aware of something I'd never known before, about my own reaction to the malleability of days, my own obsession with the weather. (The Man says that when I enthuse about temperature or sun or rain in the way that I can, sometimes, I become in that moment almost perfectly British.)

But still, here we are, at the edge. I'm hoping that the expanding sunlight makes the work, too, expand, so that it fills the days like blossoms and warmth. Punting weather, garden weather.

What to Expect from an English Winter

More mince pies than you can shake a stick at. If you liked them before Christmas, you sure as hell won't want to see another one after, and if you didn't like them before Christmas, well...I don't envy you. A bout of "unseasonably cold" weather (you didn't see this coming? after how many centuries? really?). Lots (and lots and lots) of subsequent talk about how cold it is. Very beautiful snowflakes. Weekend girls with bare legs, pretending that it isn't unseasonably cold out. Lots of sniffles and coughs. Frost making art deco patterns on the cars at night. Stoic cyclists. Bare branches. A flurry over hot alcoholic drinks before Christmas (mulled cider, mulled wine...) followed by a general laziness about them after (who can be bothered?). Potatoes for dinner, every night. Root vegetable feasts and homemade soups. Log fires. Coal fires. The smell of log fires and coal fires on the streets. Scarves. Girls in very cool boots. Pubs, but not pub gardens. A brief glorification of the English summer ("oh, I can't wait for June...") followed by a berating of the English summer ("ugh, it'll just rain the whole time anyway). A general sense of polite but vaguely uncomfortable waiting.

The Shadow of Things*

Instead of going home after work, like I say I will, I park my bicycle on The Plain and cross over Magdalen bridge under a dusting of the tiniest snowflakes I have every seen. I detour through the Botanical Gardens, hushed now, and still, a flowerless expanse full of only of sleeping things, frost-bitten leaves and naked trees.

At Christ Church Meadow the Man calls, and we meet by the walls of Merton college, perambulate around the perimeter of the Christ Church playing fields while schoolboys in red rugby sweaters have a football game on the dark green grass.

Later, when he has gone for a coffee, I make my way around the whole of Christ Church meadow. I see three, maybe four other people on my travels, all of them solitary too, all of them shrouded also in a fog. I put my hood up to stay warm and watch the reflections in the green river, and the ice on a barbed-wire fence, and that soft white dust on the pathway.

The snow is kinder here. In Boston, I remember winters where it seemed fierce as a criminal, and just as evil. Even on a good day, it would coat the streets in heavy layers, become one with the ice and mud; and when it fell, it fell. Here it settles; it's gentle on the wind, unobtrusive, and sometimes you think maybe you're imagining it, that your mind has conjured it out of the cold. It's quiet and pretty; as if, so English has it become, it's afraid to offend.

The city looks more fragile these days. You can see the breath escaping the cold lips of every human here. We live this season in a city made of breath, and of frost, which fades under rare sunlight and cracks in the cold. The cyclists keep their eyes down, their scarves close to their mouths, but in spite of this there is a strange invigoration to be had in coasting down the High with a wind on your tail and your cheeks burning. Maybe it's the only way to feel really alive, when everything else has gone so frozen: to move, to work up a sweat, to remind yourself that in spite of the ice, you haven't frozen. There's warmth somewhere here.

From the upper reading room of the Bodleian yesterday I watched the sun set over the Radcliffe Camera. It was the first time I had ever set foot in the Bodleian. All I did was read and write, but I think it changed me; I think I'm a different person, in relation to Oxford, than I was before I entered. The feeling I got inside is the feeling I think I'm supposed to get in churches, but rarely do: reverence, a resonance deep down in the heart. A sense of surrender and of abandon, but happy abandon.

But still, the last few days have been seen through a haze of alienation. I think it's the fog, and the cold; but I blame the weather when conveniant, I know, and maybe partly it's my own introversion, rearing its ugly head, trying to suck me back into myself, trying to turn my thoughts sour. Bits of things seem wrong, somehow, backwards or upside-down, like maybe the painting I'm in is askew. All the right bits are there, but they're slanted, at wrong angles, and I haven't shifted with them. We have hot chocolate at a café on St. Aldates and I feel that I'm in the wrong part of town, somehow, that I've left a bit of myself somewhere else; we have a drink in the pub, at a table close by the door that we've never sat at before, and I'm restless. There's just a bit of me on edge, all the time. Even when I come back from the first truly satisfying run I've had in months (the kind that makes you literally grin while you're still on the street, the kind that's almost like sex, or drink, in the way it exhilerates you), there's something in the greyness of the day and the midday emptiness of the house that makes my own thoughts seem foreign.

I see people I know everywhere now--in the library, in the street, in the pub--and I think this is good, it means that this place is starting to belong to me in the same way that I, for better or worse, belong to it.

I see people I know everywhere now and, in this cold time, this austere time, I feel we don't quite connect, that we can't until the Spring, the thaw; but we watch each other's breath come in a cloud and are bound anyway by the beauty around us, enfolded in the city and her clever fog.

*Oscar Wilde: “I envy you going to Oxford: it is the most flower-like time of one’s life. One sees the shadow of things in silver mirrors.”

My 2008 in Quick Review

We started off the year with Fidel Castro's cigars at the top of a hill overlooking the Pacific, near the Western Gate, windy. I got my university diploma; it was very large. Then it was back to England for an austere few months of late winter cold-ness. I hunted for a job. I got a job. I re-discovered how little I like office work. The Man did research for a BBC 4 radio show, and became a temporary commutor to London. I started cycling everywhere; first shakily, winding my way round the neighborhood for practice. I went to my very first hen-night; I had a fairly significant birthday; my parents came to visit us in Oxford; the Man turned another year older. We tried to handle the cruel transition from winter cold to tempting spring almost-warmth with as much grace as possible, but I still underdressed a lot. In a green silk dress and a kilt, we attended the wedding of two friends deep in love. We celebrated our first year together. I decided once and for all to be a writer, and to go back to school. As summer settled over the city we headed back to California, where we lounged our way through a heat wave, tasted lots of wine, did our best impression of surfers, and got a nice tan. I also applied for a student visa, drove to Burbank and back in one day to ensure that it was received in good time, and, thankfully, was granted one.

Back in England, it was midsummer and beautiful. I hung the washing outside and wore sleeveless dresses, and visited the botanical gardens, and the parks and meadows, often. I went for long walks. I was out of work until September, so I became very, very, very poor. I had to admit that I've been foolish with money in the past, and take out a loan for school. We visited Cambridge, and Brighton, and at the end of August, with the barest hint of autumn in the air, we went to Paris, where we watched people unabashedly for several days straight. I started work again. I started school again. The city revealed itself to be beautiful in autumn, too. The days got colder, and shorter. We looked after a veritable menagerie in the countryside, feeding pigs and staying warm by a log fire. We celebrated the election of Barack Obama and I went to my first bonfire night. Several friends moved away, seeking fortune in London. Time began to seem like a blur, like something running towards Christmas full-pelt.

And I didn't go back to California for Christmas. For the first time ever. We went to carol services and ate mince pies and mulled wine; we bought presents for people and tried to hide what we'd got for each other. We went a few miles out of town for a week, and had Christmas with the Man's family, and unwrapped gifts and ate lots and lots of turkey, and slept in, and stayed warm, and read books, and when we came back, though we'd had a very nice time, we were also happy to be home again.

There are things I've misesd, I'm sure. But for now, we're off to the Isis for a drink and then to dinner with friends to celebrate the new year.

Best to all, and hope you enjoy this last evening in 2008...