Better to have loved and lost
It’s been ages since I posted, and for the usual reason - so much to do, so little time! Everything I do now is tinged with sadness - even though we have five weeks to go, it feels like such an incredibly short time. I go into town almost every day now, and find myself pacing the streets as though I can soak up the essence of Oxford into my very body. I figure that if I can get enough of it into me before we go, the beauty might linger - I might be able to close my eyes and see every twist and turn and cobble and gargoyle in my mind forever more.
The other day I went down Little Clarendon St and took a new turn to find a small iron-fenced garden thick with trees and smooth lawn with people eating their lunch in the sun. I lay flat on my back in the shade (when’s the last time I lay flat on the ground?), turned my iPod onto a recording of CS Lewis reading The Four Loves and watched the trees over my head; the swallows doing kamikaze dives from a hundred feet up, the light making every leaf bright green and translucent, the small buzzing things going about their business between treetops and stars.
I was thinking today about how I felt that first day we walked through Oxford. We left the studio apartment, planted our feet on Iffley Rd and walked towards Magdalen Bridge. From the first moment I glimpsed the Great Tower of Magdalen, I felt as though I had been holding my breath for 30 years and just been allowed to exhale. It was as though I was water, trying for years to exist in oil, and finally being poured into water for the first time. In short, it was home from the very first second, and in a way that Auckland never has been. That sounds ridiculous, given that I've never lived anywhere but Auckland. It is true however, and I'm worried more and more about how I'm going to exist in brash young Auckland after living amidst the most beautiful and gracious city on earth, a thousand years of culture on my very doorstep, surrounded by loveliness every minute of every day. The flipside is, would I rather have stayed in Auckland and never known such happiness? It is absolutely better to have loved and lost.
So anyway, some cool things from the last couple of weeks:
High tea at the Cafe Royal, first coffee house in Europe! (Of course.) Me with Karina and Zoe.
The Eagle and Child after the last Lewis Society meeting two weeks ago.
Last-day exam-sitter covered in flour, eggs and glitter in the 400 year-old Turf Tavern
Clean exam-sitters going into the Exam Schools
General David Petraeus speaking at the Oxford Union (I think Oxford is magic. He comes here, then McChrystal shoots his mouth off and gets fired by the president, and Petraeus becomes, like, King of Afghanistan. I wonder what I’ll be when I get home?!)
We went to Paris with Steve's brother Chris and his fiancee Vicky (yay for more sisters!). Me on the Eiffel Tower:
“One, two, three! Vive Algerie!” Crazed Algerian supporters flocking through the underground
to the Eiffel Tower to watch the game on the outdoor screens.
Steve, Chris and Vicky walking down the steps from Sacre Coeur past the best little French restaurant ever. Still thinking about that duck...
Steve walking back to our hotel in Montmartre about 10pm.
Artists copying great works in the Louvre.
Me in an overgrown path on Shotover Hill, behind CSL's house:
Encaenia - all the dons dressed in their finery processing to the Sheldonian for the
conferring of honorary degrees.
The Sheldonian with no-one in front of it for once!
A memorial seat on Shotover, inscribed “He still travels the loved hill side”.
More Shotover
Ducks against the pond in Lewis Reserve.
Now to do the shopping and plan the weekend! I think... London. Yes. It's been a few weeks.
The other day I went down Little Clarendon St and took a new turn to find a small iron-fenced garden thick with trees and smooth lawn with people eating their lunch in the sun. I lay flat on my back in the shade (when’s the last time I lay flat on the ground?), turned my iPod onto a recording of CS Lewis reading The Four Loves and watched the trees over my head; the swallows doing kamikaze dives from a hundred feet up, the light making every leaf bright green and translucent, the small buzzing things going about their business between treetops and stars.
I was thinking today about how I felt that first day we walked through Oxford. We left the studio apartment, planted our feet on Iffley Rd and walked towards Magdalen Bridge. From the first moment I glimpsed the Great Tower of Magdalen, I felt as though I had been holding my breath for 30 years and just been allowed to exhale. It was as though I was water, trying for years to exist in oil, and finally being poured into water for the first time. In short, it was home from the very first second, and in a way that Auckland never has been. That sounds ridiculous, given that I've never lived anywhere but Auckland. It is true however, and I'm worried more and more about how I'm going to exist in brash young Auckland after living amidst the most beautiful and gracious city on earth, a thousand years of culture on my very doorstep, surrounded by loveliness every minute of every day. The flipside is, would I rather have stayed in Auckland and never known such happiness? It is absolutely better to have loved and lost.
So anyway, some cool things from the last couple of weeks:
High tea at the Cafe Royal, first coffee house in Europe! (Of course.) Me with Karina and Zoe.
The Eagle and Child after the last Lewis Society meeting two weeks ago.
Last-day exam-sitter covered in flour, eggs and glitter in the 400 year-old Turf Tavern
Clean exam-sitters going into the Exam Schools
General David Petraeus speaking at the Oxford Union (I think Oxford is magic. He comes here, then McChrystal shoots his mouth off and gets fired by the president, and Petraeus becomes, like, King of Afghanistan. I wonder what I’ll be when I get home?!)
We went to Paris with Steve's brother Chris and his fiancee Vicky (yay for more sisters!). Me on the Eiffel Tower:
“One, two, three! Vive Algerie!” Crazed Algerian supporters flocking through the underground
to the Eiffel Tower to watch the game on the outdoor screens.
Steve, Chris and Vicky walking down the steps from Sacre Coeur past the best little French restaurant ever. Still thinking about that duck...
Steve walking back to our hotel in Montmartre about 10pm.
Artists copying great works in the Louvre.
Me in an overgrown path on Shotover Hill, behind CSL's house:
Encaenia - all the dons dressed in their finery processing to the Sheldonian for the
conferring of honorary degrees.
The Sheldonian with no-one in front of it for once!
A memorial seat on Shotover, inscribed “He still travels the loved hill side”.
More Shotover
Ducks against the pond in Lewis Reserve.
Now to do the shopping and plan the weekend! I think... London. Yes. It's been a few weeks.