Books, lectures and afternoon tea
So yesterday I revisited my young adulthood. I went to Regents Park College to hear a visiting lecturer speak on George MacDonald's Phantastes and Lilith. And as I sat there I remembered how it felt to sit day after day in tutorials I didn’t really understand, with debate whizzing around my ears and knowing I didn’t have a hope of understanding any of it. I need more time to process things than most people I think, and always learned best when I could see something written down. But I also remembered the intellectual excitement I used to feel, the sensation of worlds opening up, all this information there for the learning. I learned some great stuff about George MacDonald’s life, work and motivation (German Romanticism, Platonism, the idea of universal salvation) and had a lot of new avenues for reading opened up (Shelley, the rest of MacDonald, some Julia Kristeva if I want to bake my brain, E.T.A Hoffman's novella The Golden Pot, which GM read right before writing Phantastes) and had some cool insights into the text and its influences (eg. the hero’s name, Anodos, means ‘the way up’ or ‘pathless’) and Lewis Carroll read Phantastes (in which the hero accesses another world through a mirror) before writing Through the Looking Glass. There’s lots more but you guys don’t want to read it! I almost wish I had to write an essay on it so as to really get to grips with it all. Then I could mark myself on it... that would be awesome... I totally think I'd get a B+...
After that I went to a talk by Gulshan Esther, a woman who grew up a devoted Muslim in Pakistan, contracted polio and was crippled completely down her right-hand side as a child. After being flown around the world in search of a cure she was pronounced a hopeless case, then in 1971, at age nineteen, she had a vision of Jesus and was healed immediately of her polio. (Coolest thing - Jesus spoke Urdu and told her to look for him in the Koran, which she duly did.) She converted to Christianity, was thrown out of her house, her brother tried to kill her (the gun jammed every time he tried to fire it) and imprisoned. They eventually let her out of prison because too many of the inmates were becoming Christians! She wrote a book called The Torn Veil which I must read, because her accent meant that it was hard to hear what she was saying. Her sincerity and the strength of her faith were unmistakable though, and it was really inspiring.
After the talk I walked down Cornmarket at about 9pm to get the bus, trying to describe to myself what the air felt like. The closest analogy I can think of is that the air felt like milk. You know how if you pull your finger through milk at blood heat you can feel a silky resistance but no change in temperature? It was just like that; like I was sweeping the air aside as I walked, it was so still and soft. I was sort of trailing my hands behind me trying to feel a breeze of any kind, but there was nothing - just that soft resistance. It was amazing.
Earlier in the day I went to visit Betty, an elderly lady who lives in Headington and is lonely and needs visitors. I walked in, introduced myself, and she told me for an hour and a half about the men in her family who have married Americans who have then divorced them, and about every person she knew in Cypress during the war who died. She also told me how they died, and after an hour and a half of bombs/shootings I was feeling nauseous and desperate to get out. It was so unrelentingly negative, and she was so bitter that I was actually shocked, and I’m not usually shocked by older people, usually putting everything down to age. Also she was racist - “I have this lodger... African... you know, black” (huge eyes) “not that I mind...” The only way I could get out was walk towards the door and say goodbye at every step while she started new conversations and showed me photos. I’ll be going to see her every week, and I’m going to take charge of the conversation next week - no more death and destruction.
What was cool was that she asked me to come for a cup of tea, which meant a tray with a traycloth (first time I've seen anyone other than me use one! And she's... 87...)and matching china and her grandmother’s massive tarnished silver teapot and three types of biscuits and a pile of chicken and ham sandwiches which I was expected to eat (and obliged). It was so wonderfully English!
OK, next thing. I’ve had two shifts in the charity shop now, and it’s fab. The coolest thing is taking down a massive rubbish bag full of clothes from the floor-to-ceiling storage bin, tipping it out and finding... what? Well, today there were a lot of sweaty Balliol college track pants and sweatshirts that all went in the bin. But one day soon, sweet readers... one day there will be perfect vintage dresses and gorgeous handbags and size 42-shoes from the 1940s (ahahaha as if). It is lots and lots of fun, and I love every minute of it.
After that I went to a talk by Gulshan Esther, a woman who grew up a devoted Muslim in Pakistan, contracted polio and was crippled completely down her right-hand side as a child. After being flown around the world in search of a cure she was pronounced a hopeless case, then in 1971, at age nineteen, she had a vision of Jesus and was healed immediately of her polio. (Coolest thing - Jesus spoke Urdu and told her to look for him in the Koran, which she duly did.) She converted to Christianity, was thrown out of her house, her brother tried to kill her (the gun jammed every time he tried to fire it) and imprisoned. They eventually let her out of prison because too many of the inmates were becoming Christians! She wrote a book called The Torn Veil which I must read, because her accent meant that it was hard to hear what she was saying. Her sincerity and the strength of her faith were unmistakable though, and it was really inspiring.
After the talk I walked down Cornmarket at about 9pm to get the bus, trying to describe to myself what the air felt like. The closest analogy I can think of is that the air felt like milk. You know how if you pull your finger through milk at blood heat you can feel a silky resistance but no change in temperature? It was just like that; like I was sweeping the air aside as I walked, it was so still and soft. I was sort of trailing my hands behind me trying to feel a breeze of any kind, but there was nothing - just that soft resistance. It was amazing.
Earlier in the day I went to visit Betty, an elderly lady who lives in Headington and is lonely and needs visitors. I walked in, introduced myself, and she told me for an hour and a half about the men in her family who have married Americans who have then divorced them, and about every person she knew in Cypress during the war who died. She also told me how they died, and after an hour and a half of bombs/shootings I was feeling nauseous and desperate to get out. It was so unrelentingly negative, and she was so bitter that I was actually shocked, and I’m not usually shocked by older people, usually putting everything down to age. Also she was racist - “I have this lodger... African... you know, black” (huge eyes) “not that I mind...” The only way I could get out was walk towards the door and say goodbye at every step while she started new conversations and showed me photos. I’ll be going to see her every week, and I’m going to take charge of the conversation next week - no more death and destruction.
What was cool was that she asked me to come for a cup of tea, which meant a tray with a traycloth (first time I've seen anyone other than me use one! And she's... 87...)and matching china and her grandmother’s massive tarnished silver teapot and three types of biscuits and a pile of chicken and ham sandwiches which I was expected to eat (and obliged). It was so wonderfully English!
OK, next thing. I’ve had two shifts in the charity shop now, and it’s fab. The coolest thing is taking down a massive rubbish bag full of clothes from the floor-to-ceiling storage bin, tipping it out and finding... what? Well, today there were a lot of sweaty Balliol college track pants and sweatshirts that all went in the bin. But one day soon, sweet readers... one day there will be perfect vintage dresses and gorgeous handbags and size 42-shoes from the 1940s (ahahaha as if). It is lots and lots of fun, and I love every minute of it.