My regularity with this blog has been less than regular, so once again I’m time-jumping to the present to reflect a bit more on where I am, after which I will get back to where i was.
And where am I? After last night, I can’t quite be sure. Was it all a dream, as the good-natured fairy suggested (but wait...how can he have suggested it if it was, in fact, a dream), or did I and Hippolyta’s other “fourth cousins” truly gallivant about in the gathering silk skirts of an Oxford evening, opening mysterious briefcases, attending amateur drama auditions (to play the role of bats - “whEEEEEEE-NEE-Nee-Nee-nee-nee-nee,” which, on the authority of that dubious troupe is the sound that bats make), breaking into confidential files, witnessing a streetside spat/pursuit between Demetrius and Helena, spying on a video chat between Lysander and Hermia that occurred behind a pub, attending to dapper-suited Egeus’s fatherly woes and his plans to make his daughter marry Demetrius, kill her, or have her forswear men (reasonable options, surely), and otherwise scouring the streets for snippets of an embellished, and wildly-entertaining performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Oxford - the view from my temporary home
Otherworldly Oxford - evening of Midsummer Night's Dream
Sometimes life is a comedy. Sometimes grief turns to laughter, and strife unreasonably transforms into fullness. Perhaps we need more Pucks in our lives.
For the last couple of days I have strolled about Oxford, sniffing the dense must of scholarship and inspiration, privilege and potential. Before I started down my epic European path, I knew that I wanted an academic stretch along which my feet might saunter, where my eyes and mind might take in more modest and differently-powerful monuments, and so Oxford suits perfectly my meandering trail.
Oxford street views
Oxford street views - Queen's Lane
Oxford street views - Queen's Lane - flowers
Oxford street views - Thames River, a bit south of Christ Church
Bodleian Library - dating from 14th century, or 1602 in its current form
Started with 20 books, then 300, then those were destroyed during a purge by Edward VI of "superstitious," and Catholic-related material. Today, by virtue of the Bodley's 1610 agreement with the Stationers' Company and subsequent copyright laws, the library contains so many books it has repeatedly contrived and created space to hold them
Christ Church - interior view from courtyard (you may have noticed I favor archways)
Christ Church, archway detail ;-)
Christ Church War Memorial Garden
Christ Church gardens
Radcliffe Camera
Yesterday, for instance, I took a book-guided, zigzag walking tour of the collegiate homes and haunts of such literary figures as Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Aldous Huxley, William Tyndale and Percy Bysshe Shelley (who was in fact expelled from Oxford but is now memorialized as a statue - fancy that). I actually stood inside the Eagle and Child, the pub where the Inklings (Lewis, Tolkien, and others) used to meet. It felt like the culmination of a literary pilgrimage.
Me and Magdalen College (C.S. Lewis went here - Chronicles of Narnia, yo!)
The Eagle and Child - where the Inklings routinely placed their bottoms (Tolkien! C.S. Lewis!) I wandered around inside, but alas, I did not drink a pint
Then, last night, as I already described, I pursued, with a group of friendly strangers, a progressive theater experience which inbreathed Shakespeare, a figure of similar study and craft, and felt the quickening that the output of such hallowed halls can deliver. The contents of ivory towers need not decompose, if we just play with them.
Moving along: I am in Great Britain. It has been a culture shock, but a gentle one. This sort of thing stands out to me. Prior to a conventional experience, I like to think I will be immune to the responses that befall everyone else - as if social and psychological commonplaces were transmissible, as if I could put on some sort of cultural face mask and protect myself from being “normal.”
So I supposed I wouldn’t have culture shock, as I supposed I wouldn’t have jetlag when I first arrived in Spain (I did), but on my train ride from Gatwick Airport, I felt frozen by the explosion of accessibility around me. I understood what everyone was saying, they all looked more or less like me, they dressed and even (I am sure my overwhelmed mind imagined some of this) seemed to carry books like me. I engaged in halting conversation and realized that I was still deliberating over my words, still speaking slowly, as if these others and I were leaping logistical gaps to touch one another. As if English was not my mother tongue.
Being in Spain, Italy, Greece, has afforded me the unique pleasure of communicative economy. Language feels much more special when you cannot be careless, or when you have to carefully explain every careless thing you say. Conversely, over the last month and a half I have learned to cherish the sound of my native language dancing on non-native tongues, because everyone I have talked to is likewise so thoughtful about what they say. When something is not automatic, its richness swells. And as a side note, I am ashamed of any moment in my entire life when I ever mocked the accent of a non-native English speaker - what a childish thing to focus attention on, when compared against the impressive feat of mastering vocabulary, grammar, and with great frequency the idiomatic nuance of a language you were not born into. I offer high praise to anyone who can skilfully speak a lick of a second language, and apologies for my past self who judged so immaturely. Apply with pride whatever accent you want.
Now, however, I can be lazy with English again. Except I can’t - not quite yet. I still find myself deliberating. That has good and bad sides to it. As my return to the States draws nearer, I will observe, and experience, with interest how my self handles this reincorporation. Hopefully the proportion of hijinks will stay, well, high, so that the academic processes are continually leavened and enlivened by good-natured chaos.
As for the pyramid in the title: I want to sneak in a little introspection, despite my promise a couple of blog posts ago. After my “Better Way” spleen-venting last week, during which I was still in Crete, a few things happened.
First, the heat wave broke. For almost the last month, wherever I have been, the temperature has been 90 Fahrenheit or above, many times closing in on 100. Add to this the fact that I am well south of the climate I normally inhabit, so the sun is more intense than I am accustomed to. This has been, in brief, draining.
Second, I spent 2 very quiet, unambitious days in Siteia, enjoying a remote, privately-managed apartment high up on a hill, a stone’s throw from the Aegean Sea. I stood on a balcony watching waves frost the rocks and sand with foam, fell asleep listening to that music, ate gluten-free pasta and skewered chicken, took plentiful sandy strolls, and rode a scenic bus to Vai, where a large palm forest cradles a beach from which one witnesses the astonishing range of colors painted upon that magnificent Sea.
Sitia and the Aegean Sea
Sitia and the Aegean Sea - sunset
Sitia and the Aegean Sea - sunset
Vai beach panorama
Vai beach from hilltop trail
Aegean Sea from Vai hilltop trail
Finally, and this took place on my last day in Crete, on the bus from Rethimno to Irakleio, I heard the song “Africa,” by Toto. American music seems to be common in places like buses and supermarkets in Southern Europe. For me, it is an absurd and beautiful piece of cultural syncretism. I love to wonder how many people understand the songs, and then I love to wonder how many different ways people can understand a thing, for even when we know the words, it is not always the words which touch us. On this occasion the song arrived almost like a prophecy - at the time, mainly in the form of the music and melody - its romantic, aspirational quality, the yearning, the hopefulness of the tune. As the bus traced the curves of endless seaside hills, as painted water stretched endlessly to the north while rock-striped and tree-dotted hills and mountains yawned forever to the south, this tune from 1980’s America filled me once again with the awareness of where I was, what I had done and was still doing. I encourage anyone reading, who resonates with the yearning to travel (in whatever way), to discover (whatever it is you need to discover), to hope and have hope fulfilled, to listen to the song, and also look up the lyrics, and see if they speak to you as well.
Bus from Irakleio to Sitia (not Rethimno to Irakleio but you get the idea)
Bus from Irakleio to Sitia
I realized in those moments that I have been looking at the bottom of the pyramid from the top, anguished by some basic, missing bricks. Naturally we humans can (and do) debate what is essential about life, and things like food and companionship are generally agreed-upon. My struggles in these realms are real, but on that bus, Toto and the bus driver who chose to play it reached without knowing across valleys of culture and time to touch me and remind me that, as much as I may need and desire the pieces of life I don’t have yet, I should relish the ones that I do.
As I heeded this message, it floored me to consider just how much I have lived in the last two months. Does this make my life complete? Of course not, it is absurd to think that life is ever complete. But my life has become so much more full, and that holds immense and lasting value.
Some of my hungers remain unsated, but in the meantime, the rare and extraordinary adventures I have had the privilege and pleasure of experiencing have taken a bit of the edge off of those hungers.
Flip your perspective - evening of Midsummer Night's Dream
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