pinecone on the tent

strawberry stains on the teacup like lipstick marks.

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:42:00 -0400

strawberry stains on the teacup like lipstick marks.

Punning crests (battering RAM) and unfortunate initials in room...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:37:00 -0400

Punning crests (battering RAM) and unfortunate initials in room 8.

party animals.

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 14:26:57 -0400

party animals.

Happy Father’s Day xxx

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 14:24:15 -0400

Happy Father’s Day xxx

I posted this when my knees were still knocking together...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:06:00 -0400

I posted this when my knees were still knocking together (it’s hella scary gettting up/down that tower), but I feel like I should say a little something, it being Eighth Week and all. (Even though I still have one more tutorial and two more weeks in this city.)

I like this photo because of all the different little bits of Magdalen you can see through the cut stone. It’s like a series of keyholes—or portholes, or portals, and there’s a different little world visible through each. Cloisters, the Deer Park, the New Buildings. This tower was built in like 1490 and is the tallest building in Oxford—an iconic part of its dreaming skyline.

Oxford is all about bell towers and stained glass and heavy wooden doors in thick stone walls. It’s all about having keys. The key symbolizes privilege and exclusion, yes. But a key is also a means of access, just as education is the ultimate way to open doors and to transcend (get it, I’m 150 feet in the air!) to the life you want to live. Boy, you shoulda seen the size of the key you need to open the door at the foot of this tower. Overkill.

These past two terms I’ve felt so lucky and incredulous to be here, but at the same time, like it’s been waiting for me for forever. I didn’t even know how much Oxford was part of my cultural and intellectual…subconscious! It is a place that I didn’t really quite believe existed, but of which I have been catching glimpses my whole life.

There’s a real magic to this city, and I’ve felt it as I’ve squeezed through heavy doors from a sunny street to a wind-filled courtyard, or when I’ve tiptoed through library stacks with stacks of books in my own arms, when I’ve lain under the tulips in the Botanic Garden, or cycled through lamp-lit alleyways, or under the Bridge of Sighs as the sun is forked in Bodleian spires.

I’m just doing end-of-term rambling, really. But I guess I wanted to say that I have found a kind of joy and solace that I didn’t quite expect to find in the heart of this grey city. In the exact words of Evelyn Waugh (I know it’s trite), I came to Oxford because

“I was in search of love, (…) and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.”

and…I did. Not in the way I expected, exactly. But I did.

from the Colenimo Spring/Summer 2013 lookbook

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:17:22 -0400

from the Colenimo Spring/Summer 2013 lookbook

Frida + Grant Harder

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:25:56 -0400

Frida + Grant Harder

You go, Grant Harder.

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:01:25 -0400

You go, Grant Harder.

Photo

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 18:43:00 -0400

Photo

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 14:00:00 -0400

"How now, you secret, black and midnight hags!"

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:58:33 -0400

“How now, you secret, black and midnight hags!”

- Macbeth

chug. chug. chug. chug. chug.

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:46:52 -0400

chug. chug. chug. chug. chug.

A. A. Milne

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:09:26 -0400

A. A. Milne

except, that run from grief to high delight (even if only to run...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 13:14:52 -0400

except, that run from grief to high delight (even if only to run right back) is one of our most vital survival skills.

Photo

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:56:22 -0400

Photo

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:55:13 -0400

last words of Woolf’s last novel.

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 10:25:59 -0400

last words of Woolf’s last novel.

Aquatint, yes. Now also a city of etched copper and encaustic...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 15:56:00 -0400

Aquatint, yes. Now also a city of etched copper and encaustic paint. Yesterday I sat in that courtyard and watched the shadow of the wall rise like a tide up the sundial. The bamboo whispering exotically in the breeze. A bell clanged from a humble dome and the numinous notes from the chapel organ echoed in the square. It was like some golden monastery with the fellows and readers like tweed-robed monks. Going in and out of wooden doors with creaking latches; entering and exiting as if in a wordless play. Later, I peered into the chapel and fell in love with the organist. (I am always in love, on a good day. The organist, merely its momentary focus.) He was placed, economically, right by the door. He was not the organist of my imagination, an old woman hidden in a loft behind the cancer of copper pipes, but a young man in his commoner’s gown, fingers racing along the ivory. On his bench and at his feet, sheets and sheets of music. A scholar, like me, intent on the keys, his tappings filling the chapel with sacred sound…and me with strange rapture.

Nabokov, killin it.

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:50:10 -0400

Nabokov, killin it.

"They stay up all night, as watchful and alive as thieves!"

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:38:18 -0400

“They stay up all night,
as watchful and alive as thieves!”

- Rumi