my life in the sun

These last few days (and weeks) have been glorious in Oxford.  Sunshine and warmth and blossoms that fill the air with perfume and color.  I guess I've never really understood about the spring before - about why it's the season for twitterpation and first kisses.  But with a sky so blue and colors so bright it's impossible to feel anything but beautiful.  

That is, unless you're spending the day studying in the library.  Which I was - for a while.  So, in order to cope, I created a new routine: get up (with the assistance of three alarms), spend an hour saturating in the sun while eating a croissant and sipping coffee at Combibos (my new favorite coffee shop), make it to the library around the time they were opening their doors, write, saturate in the sun over a picnic lunch in the Botanic Garden, return to the library, write . . . you get the picture.   

my morning routine

lunch in the Botanic Garden across from Magdalen College

Eventually, however, I gave up on the library all together.  It wasn't helping my panic attacks, so now I just study in the parks . . . permanently.  Usually writing by hand, and then returning to my room to type up the notes at night.  But today I actually took my computer with me.

iced vanilla lattes help the writing process immensely 

the University Parks

So no, it's probably not the most efficient study plan.  And yes, the writing is going terribly slow.  But at least I'm happy while I'm doing it.  'Cause like I said, it's impossible not to feel pretty - at home with earth and sky, content, delighted, capable of flight - in the springtime.

shifting seasons under an ever-moving sky

I've always been surprised at the frequency with which one seems to get asked about one's favorite season.  Personally, I've never really had an answer.  I mean, how does one differentiate between hot, hotter, and hottest?  Granted, I'm not being completely fair, but most of my life has measured seasonal change in temperature and little else.  Even in Oregon the seasons weren't particularly radical.  At least, not where I was walking through campus with my head stuck in a mountain of books.  Drizzly, rainy, sporadic sunshine.  Nothing too exciting.

But here, here I love to watch the seasons change.

Granted, most of winter wasn't particularly spectacular, though there is nothing much lovelier than snow falling in glowing lamplight.

But these days the world is awash with sprinkling petals -- consumed with flowering trees.

And in our college courtyard, I watch a tree, day by day, unfurl tiny, jewel-green leaves, sure I've never seen life bloom so gradually. 

But the autumn is definitely how I'll remember Oxford (due, in part, to the reality that it used to be the only way I remebered Oxford and will always be the way I saw it first).  The walls of ancient colleges ablaze with flaming vines.

As Virginia Woolf put it, "If the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning."

And over it all, a sky that changes day by day, hour by hour.  That glows in swimming blues, and yearns in charcoal grays.

To quote Woolf again (from Jacob's Room with some small alterations [and I'll reward anyone who spots them]):

They say the sky is the same everywhere. But above Oxford -- anyhow above the roof of Christ Church -- there is a difference. Is it fanciful to suppose the sky, washed into the crevices of Christ Church, lighter, thinner, more sparkling that the sky elsewhere? Does Oxford burn not only into the night, but into the day?

What did I do to deserve to live somewhere so spectacularly, hauntingly beautiful?

Oxford in Bloom

Spring, it would seem, is finally here.  Yesterday and today: actually WARM outside. 

Just ask Corinne.  

  

Spring ruminations from a Bodleian window

There really are not words to describe the glory of an Oxford sky
when the sun shines, and the blue is soft as summer dreams,
and the towers of All Souls gleam with half-articulated longing,
and the whole world trembles with possibility
and youthful, age-worn, promise.

Autumn in Oxford

Today feels exquisitely like fall.  The sunlight filtering through the crisp coolness of autumn mist, and the city's austere beauty beginning to soften with the glimmer of Christmas lights and lighthearted holiday shoppers.  Add in a toffee nut latte, and the only thing missing is space at a coffee shop to actually sit and study.

But alas, the influx of tourists and shoppers means that back to college I must go, and sit in the dark basement room of the MCR to do my reading.  We'll see how long I last.  

east-coast autumn

Walking home from the library in lamplight, it took me a while to realize that blowing across the red brick sidewalk, and crunching beneath my flipflops, were the yellow-brown leaves of fall.

Snowstorms and hail, oh my!

It is currently snowing outside our front door. But the sun is also shinning. Simultaneously.

The weather has been so odd lately. It has snowed more since I got back from Oxford/Jordan than any other winter I've been in Oregon (and that's discounting the huge blizzard they had at the end of last semester).

I was just at the coast for the weekend, where the weather was alternating between sunshine, massive hailstorms, and snow. Very beautiful, but just so odd.

However, I'll happily take this weather over rain . . . at least for a while.

(the apartments across from ours -- you can't tell in the picture, but snow was in the process of falling)

Snowing in October!

I just had one of the most amazing experiences ever. I walked home from the Bodleian in the snow! Yes, it is snowing. Melting as soon as it touches the ground, but still. It's coming down in big, beautiful flakes. They're caught in the yellow lamp light, twirl, dance, and die. I stepped out of the Bodleian (where I was studying) to find the courtyard empty, dark, and full of falling snowflakes. Still and magical. I grinned like an idiot the whole way home (even though my fingers almost froze off). Oxford and dancing snow. Smile. Sigh.