Picture of the Day

My face, trying haggis.

 

How exactly would you describe that look? Give it your best adjective.

A Birthday Haiku for Jules

I'm going to break my recent habit of laundry-list posts and write in verse for a few seconds this morning.

Jules, you are the bomb
Always calm, always stylish,
With a funny laugh.

Notice the perfect iambic pentameter and spondees and crap. Oh wait, that's sonnets. Remember that I am almost a master of English (but not of Japanese poetry).

A few more seconds in prose: last night we celebrated Jules' 30th by walking out to the Trout, a great outdoor pub by the river. It was a nice hour-long stroll along bucolic grassy meadows in the slanty afternoon sun, where we saw cows, bunny rabbits, houseboats (along the canal) and horses. Given that this is the final push to the end of our coursework, it will be a heavy work week of research and a tough sprint to the tape until graduation (and more importantly, until our final papers are handed in). So, particularly nice that we were able to assemble as a group in celebration of Jules and each other last night. At two different points in the evening last night, I felt myself looking at the group as a whole and feeling lucky for them and the great company they've offered over the last five weeks. Some smart, funny, caring people we have here.

I'm going to sequester myself in the Bodleian now, and hopefully the next time you hear from me, I'll at least have an outline done. If not, let the crazy, nonsensical procrastination blogging begin.

My Trip to Scotland, to the Tune of MC Hammer

Things Which Are Legit
1) Lambswool tartan blankets
2) Hard laughter with friends
3) Hiking up Arthur's Seat on a hazy, foggy Saturday and loving green, everywhere
4) Soft and fuzzy scotch plaid cashmere scarves
5) Acting like fools during a never-ending 8 hour train ride, ignoring Shakespeare
6) Dancing amid a bed of broken glass and beer in creepy, sweaty Frankenstein's
7) The hugeness of Edinburgh Castle
8) Ali throwing that beanie cap back between her legs all cat-like and cool-like
9) Free whiskey tastings from drunken old Scottish pervs
10)Picnicking with strawberries, hummous and olive bread, bagpipes in the background

Things Which Need To Quit
1) Drunken stags dressed like whoopie cushions, acting like whoopie cushions
2) Drunken hens wearing skirts, the lengths of which are not commensurate with age
3) Inhuman snoring from strange European men in the hostel bunk above you
4) Showering with flip-flops for fear of disease
5) Circuitous return routes all over the godforsaken perimeter of the UK
6) Haggis.
7) Hostels that tell you they're booked after you've already left for your trip
8) Final research papers due the week you get back from Scotland
9) Idiots in cowboy hats trying to put their greasy little hands on my waist
10)The dollar to pound exchange rate, which is really getting old

Looking at these two lists in review, I give the entire trip a score of 9 :).

Procrastination Techniques While Semi-Musing the Tragic Plights of Enobarbus and Marc Antony

5) Counting how many Peppermint Patties I have left. Reading the back of this bag I have in my possession, one serving size is 3 patties (what a joke). Number of servings per container: 14. We have to minus the 6 that I ate since between yesterday and today. New total: 36. Number of days left in Europe: 28. Therefore I must ration 1.28 patties a day to make it through quietly and without further incident. Good to know.

4) Facebook. Why the hell does this site exist if only to ultimately thwart me from earning my graduate degree and to make me feel pathetic about myself in general. Maybe the reason I can't write this paper is because my IQ drops a few points every time I spent half an hour scrolling through other peoples' Fourth of July bbq pictures.

3) Online shopping. I am now $80 poorer and have an orange and navy, that's right, paisley shift dress waiting for me back in San Francisco.

2) Daydreaming about Maine in August, and how awesome it would be to be able to drive to Popham Beach on a hot day or to be eating a mayonnaise-laden $4 lobster roll from Fat Boy.

1) Blogging.

A Few Matters of Unimport, on a Quick Post

Some thoughts and news.

1) Ciaran, my Irish drinking/overnight train buddy from Spain, reprimanded me via Facebook last night (after reading this blog) for not writing about a crucial part of our evening together in San Ssbastian. Now I do vaguely recall the ebullient two hours of singing Joni Mitchell and bits from the soundtrack of O Brother Where Art Thou and some weird Irish folk song about a lake, on the steps facing the beach while Clare snogged and awkwardly petted her young prey beside us. Funny.

2) I have a research paper due Monday, so this is a big work week for me. I will be clocking in some major hours in the Bodleian. Anyone with insights to share on Enobarbus' position as unlikely tragic hero in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra is requested to come forward with your brilliance and/or other pearls of wisdom in general.

3) Sara's husband Clay came to our side of the pond jet-lagged yesterday, and it's going to be so fun having him here this week (especially since we already well know and love him-- he graduated Breadloaf last summer). And guess what he brought me? A freaking awesome bag of Peppermint Patties. (Thankfully, because I went through the bag Liz brought me in five days.) How bomb are my friends?

4) After many days of rest, I went for a run yesterday in Christ Church Meadow, but remembered to stretch, ice, and pop two Advil afterward, and now my knees don't hurt at all. I am walking around painless. Holla.

5) Every time I pass a gargoyle on one of my walks around town, I think of my friends back home. I don't quite know why, but I think it has something to do with the fact that it makes me feel like you guys are making this face back at me:



Miss you guys.

You Know You're Too Old to Go to an After-Hours British Nightclub When...

Oh, where do I begin.
A few words on my visit with Liz. Boy oh boy, do I love that woman. I have recovered from the sadness of her departure with few day's time, enough to reflect with so much happiness and appreciation for the fun we shared and time we spent. Those of you who know Liz find it obvious that being in Oxford with her would widen my eyes to undiscovered beauty in the place and in its food, bookstores, and strangers. Inevitably I found myself aware of how others are drawn to her, and how she makes everywhere she goes a story.

One night we had is particularly illustrative of this, and I'll remember it here. After an elegant and civilized High Table (a formal dinner which honored our guest lecturer for the evening, Christopher Ricks), several of us were feeling emboldened by the free-flowing wine that had accompanied our dinner and went on to enjoy the area’s local pubs. Contrary to what you might think, last call for pubs in Oxford is early: 11 pm for most, and the King’s Arms is the only show in town ‘til midnight. Eager to extend the evening beyond its curfew, Adam had the bright idea to check out ‘Escape’, an after-hours dance club many of us had passed by before and unwillingly noticed for its pulsating, neon pink façade and the Chumbawumba remixes blasting from the interior.

We arrived late-night, blurry, and straightaway saw that we out-aged the general populus by about a decade. There's debate over who ‘out-hipped’ who; many of our guys were still wearing jackets and ties from High Table, whereas many of the girls at Escape didn’t appear to be wearing pants at all. What they lacked in bottoms, however, they made up for in lilac eyeshadow. Most notably, a go-go pole was stationed in a dark corner of the dance floor. A real, live go-go pole with strobe lights on a platform. I saw Liz’s eyes widen and I knew it was all over. She made a beeline and proceeded to treat the pole less like an instrument for seduction and more like, say, a jungle gym, or an intense aerobic workout. Nevertheless, as she entertained herself (and me and my friends), I saw a big, bulky English 20-something chump wearing Abercrombie and Fitch fixate on her and what he clearly considered to be the opportunity of a lifetime. He made his way forward, awkwardly gyrating closer and closer, his hands about to grab Liz’s waist. In my euphoric state, I immediately shoved the bloke with both hands, straight across the dance floor. With force. When he regained his footing, he turned to give me an incredulous look. In response (and I'm telling it now as it has been joyfully recounted to me by my friend, onlooker Dave), I glared the Bumper and Grinder down menacingly and wagged my finger in his face, in a way that ominously warned "Don’t do it." He skulked off to a corner. Liz, completely on her own planet, what with the stripper pole beckoning her as if she were a monkey and as if it was some sort of tree with fruit at the top, never noticed the predator in the first place. However, my save left her free to happily climb the pole with much vigor- which she did- until 3 am, while the rest of us enthusiastically hung out in a circle doing the Running Man and Shopping Cart to the techno-beat version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”

For the rest of the week, Liz and I had good, clean fun, which included a picnic in a meadow, a lecture from Christopher Ricks, high tea with scones, preserves and clotted cream, one great, lazy afternoon reading in Blackwell's (Liz's new favorite bookstore, and it is pretty bad-ass), exploring the neighborhood of Jericho in the drizzle, and wandering around the Covered Market, marveling at flowers and warm peanut butter cookies and fresh strawberries and avocado and blood pudding and steak and kidney pies (showcased in butchers' windows). Acquainting my favorite person with this special program while strolling among both pre-14th century gargoyles and strobe lights at the same time feels too surreally awesome to be true, but I guess it really happened. See the pictures for the proof-- that's what I've been doing to remind myself of one of the most fun weeks I've had in a long time.

Looking Back (with Love) on Spain

(This is a rewind post to remember and share bits of my trip to Spain- taken the two weeks right before Oxford, but I was too busy traveling and having fun to blog. I've cut and pasted versions of what I wrote to friends about the trip here.)

Spain was pretty incredible. I saw so many things- the big things, like the Alhambra, and the Gaudi architecture and the Guggenheim, are well-reputed to be significant and awe-inspiring, which they definitely are. But the sun tapestries over cobblestone alleys, and the mercado on Las Ramblas spilling over with huge starfruits, and mangos, and truffles by the kilo, and fresh octopus and calf's brains, and the Morroccan hooka bars in Granada are even more beautiful, I think. As far as building a composite image of what Spain offered over the last few weeks, I feel like I'm carrying around a multi-sensory collage in my brain of all the smells and people we met and little shops I browsed and foods I tasted. So many colors, literally. Like, I see all these colors in my head. Like tiles.

Seville was the perfect start. A beautiful, quaint town, easy to navigate and understand and feel part of. Seville is where I lost my tinto di verano (red wine mixed with lemonade, literally translated as 'summer wine') virginity, and there was a love affair for the remainder of the trip. On the third day in Seville we took a day trip to Cadiz, a little coastal beach town a couple hours away, and the beach was so clean-- perfectly white-beige sand, and the water so blue. I fell asleep and got a massive sunburn and I felt very hot the whole way home.

Granada was bigger, and not as conventionally pretty, but very interesting. The whole city is on a big hill, so also not as easy to know. What is so beautiful and textured about Granada is that is still has a Moorish influence, which translates into feeling like you are in southern Spain and Marrakesh at the same time. Lots of delicious Morrocan food, street peddlers selling Arabian looking lamps and pointy colorful shoes and airy scarves and chunky, dangly earrings through very narrow streets, barely big enough to fit one person. Hooka lounges exist in every alley corner and cranny, with big bright cushions to sit on the ground, and billowing, fragrant smoke wafting out open windows. Lots of curvy stone stairways leading to who knows where. One night a very large and drunk Spaniard made a big scene at a taberna flamenco show we saw, and mocked the flamenco dancer and her guitarist in embarrassing ways (to himself). The spectacle was worth the price of admission, which was free.

Then, Barcelona. We arrived at midnight the eve that Spain beat Italy in the Eurocup, and thought the city was exploding. Literally. Fireworks were lighting up the sky from the inside, everything was popping and hissing, and all the Barca people had spilled out from their houses onto the streets in an impromptu parade, running down sidewalks waving Spanish flags behind them or honking horns while zooming down the street, whooping. Kind of like when the Red Sox won the World Series. After we left, Spain beat Germany to go onto the finals and I can only imagine what Las Ramblas looked like that night. I thought Barcelona was sophisticated and cosmopolitan and exciting. The Gaudi pieces were quirky and colorful and magnificent. The Museo Picasso was also fun. But in retrospect, I believe I enjoyed the smaller towns even more.

To end with San Sebastian. Beautiful, perfect San Sebastian. My favorite, most idyllic town. I want to live there. We took the overnight sleeper train from Barcelona, which left at 10 pm and arrived at 7:30 am, and ended up in a compartment with this gal and chap from northern Ireland, two young architects named Clare and Ciaran. Immediately squished and locked together like sardines packed in a can. The sleeper compartments are just flat bunks with no mattress, stacked 3 high on either side, and there's no breathing room, and you feel like you're in a concentration camp. The four of us shared cherries and melon on the train, and then we bumped into the two of them getting croissants after we arrived in town the next morning. That led to meeting up for drinks and pintxos (San Sebastian's version of tapas, which come in two forms, either 'bocadillos', which are small sandwiches filled with jamon and queso, or sardines, or potato salad, etc; or pintxos, which are elaborately presented little fillings atop a slice of baguette, bites like quail eggs and bacon or tortilla espanola or grilled squid). Which led to staying up until 4 am hanging out on these stone steps overlooking the coast and mountains, drinking very much Spanish wine out of plastic cups, and facilitating Clare's acquisition of an unsuspecting Irish guy with a mohawk (who couldn't have been more than 21), whom she'd picked up earlier that evening. She ended going home with him, and I never heard if she and Ciaran ever caught their train, scheduled to depart early that same morning. I also got slimed by a huge, disgusting slug, but that's a different story.

Bilbao. Deeply enjoyed a day trip to the Guggenheim on the last day of the trip. Designed by Frank Gehry, it is an amazing architectual masterpiece, industrial and graceful at the same time. I'm now really interested and intrigued by Juan Munoz, whose work was headlined at the museum. Among others, one of his installations is this huge room full of probably 80 monochromatic, 4 foot tall statue impersonations of smiley, squinty eyed Chinamen with no feet wearing over-sized jackets, whom you walk and weave among in your viewing, as if you are some technicolor giant living among grey asian midgets. I don't think I can explain this. However, the comedic irony of my relationship to the art did not escape me, and besides that exhibit, the rest of the museum was a joy and fed me in a way that perfectly complemented the last two days we'd had beachside.

It was a memorable two weeks that will be with me forever. Even here in Oxford, the stimulus of Spanish images and smells continues to run through my head. Check out the photo slideshow on the left, for the pictures that explain what I can't.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, for Liz Especially

I saw the best play last night. And even better, Liz and I saw it together, which is a beautiful thing. (I would guess that a fantastical play involving woodland nymphs, naked Barbie dolls, goth faeries that look like guitarists from the band Kiss, and donkey’s heads hanging out in shopping carts is a perfect thing to see while delirious and jet-lagged and doped up on two cups of coffee. You’ll have to ask my guest blogger, Liz.) The Royal Shakespeare Company performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Stratford-upon-Avon, and our entire program had tickets for the production. Lucky, special us.

Coming to Oxford, I think Americans (or I, as an American) hope to have a purist experience when viewing Shakespeare. We yearn for actors in stuffy, traditional costume and it makes us (me) feel more legit and scholarly to see a classical, Renaissance performance, actors adorned with ruffled collars and velvet gowns, handkerchiefs soaked with red paint for blood. Last night’s interpretation was very modern, and it showcased Bottom beat-boxing and quoting Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody; an enormous plastic beach ball that changed colors, serving as our timekeeper; and lots of completely over the top, farcical, hilarious sexual innuendo, a la Monty Python. For me, Puck’s character was a bit of a disappointment, not as light on his feet or whimsical as I usually think of him or like him played. However, Bottom and Helena were so fun to watch, particularly for their very contemporary phrasing and their fun interpretation of the text. They had Kramer-like comedic timing and their energy really fed the performance. Despite being modern, it was lovely and I feel officially inducted into my summer of Shakespearean study. I’ve also never laughed so hard watching Shakespeare. My cheeks hurt at points.

Liz is out straight upstairs, still sleeping since she didn’t get one wink of rest on her red-eye last night. Once she rouses, we are going to explore and most importantly, begin the day with Ben’s Cookies, which are 25% off today and half the reason I came back to the UK. Bonus to my lucky day yesterday: I had three Peppermint Patties after dinner. Score. I am so lucky.

TsangPo Blogster: First Post

This is an experiment. We'll see if the workload ultimately sabotages this extracurricular effort, but consider this my modern-day travel diary, open to the public (by 'public' I mean my closest family and friends, and only the ones who are interested, so perhaps not very public), and me. This multi-dimensional way of scrap-booking we have now is so cool, and I'm jumping on the bandwagon, similarly to when I did when acid-washed jeans and Generra Hypercolor exploded in the 90's. This blog may prove to be a more fruitful, less embarrassing trend adoption, but I'm not totally sure about that and I'm making no promises.

So I'm in; first post. The impetus for it is that I'm in Europe for two months, on mission to travel and finish up my master's through a traveling graduate program in English Literature. For me, it's a poignant summer, because it marks my fifth and last summer of Breadloaf (the name of Middlebury's graduate school of English). The program has meant a lot to me over the last five years. Alongside that, the gift of travel, for me, is that it always offers me the time and stimulus to be more observant, appreciative and creative than I make room for in my regular life.

Today I have been in Europe 23 days. I started out in Dublin by way of a long, sucky layover in Toronto, and then from Dublin traveled around Spain for two weeks before the start of Breadloaf (I am settled in Oxford now for the next six weeks as a student). Spain was pretty incredible, and for the sake of jumping right in, I don't think I'll rewind and blog extensively about the Spain trip right now. What I'll do is to cut and paste pieces of long emails sent to friends about the trip and have those do the work for me. So I'll post those next, and stay tuned.

But Oxford. Classes started last week. I'm taking Early Modern Tragedy with my favourite (all words when possible will now have British or Olde English spellings for dramatic effect) tutor, Emma Smith. She is everything you hope your professor from Oxford to be: extremely brilliant, self-deprecating, wry, understated, elegant, and funny as hell in that specific way only scholars from England are. I'm enjoying a very small seminar of six students, all seniors, and we had a ball yesterday talking about Thomas Kyd's play, The Spanish Tragedy: a terrifically gory, ridiculous but common example of Renaissance theatre that depicts among other things, a guy biting out his tongue for the audience to see fall to the stage with a sickening slap. Sidenote: he's been carrying around his son's rotting corpse for upwards of two weeks (all written in the stage direction). Bitchin'.

Today is Sunday, and we're enjoying the first weekend of our 'programme' :). Friday night (July 4th), our modest American representation bravely celebrated independence from the Brits on their turf, and we had a barbeque on our quad. Then later we stumbled down to our college pub, Deep Hall (I'm at Lincoln College on Turl St., for those of you familiar with Oxford's colleges). We moved on from there to The Bear, a quintessential Oxford pub with a ceiling so low my 6'4" friend Adam has to aggressively stoop to order his Guinness (extra cold on tap). I had my standard and much loved Pimms, which will be the drink of choice for the remainder of the summer. For those of you unfamiliar with the liquor, but familiar with my (lack of) drinking habit, it's my British Woo Woo, and I love it. But even less 'hard-core', so to speak. Like, they put strawberries and cucumbers in it and mix it with lemonade. I know, it's tough being so tough.

Yesterday I went on a great bike ride with five girlfriends to Blenheim Palace (at one point the home to Winston Churchill and where they filmed parts of Kenneth Branaugh's Hamlet). It was a twenty mile ride along the Thames, and across many harrowing round-abouts (rotaries) with cars coming from every direction, zooming on the wrong side of the road, making no apparent or discernible turn signals. Despite fearing for my life twice, it was beautiful. There were swans and lambs and cows, rivers and meadows. The palace grounds were impressive and well-manicured and included a spectacular English rose garden, but my favourite part was buying baguette sandwiches and crisps at a local croissanterie, and picnicking in the grassy meadow outside the palace gates. No, that's not true: my favourite part was/is the company. I'm lucky to be here with, among others, five wonderful, funny, intelligent, energetic women who have grown through the program with me over the last five years. Their names will come up again and you will get to know them, but by way of introduction they are Sweet Sara from Tennessee (whose attempts to disabuse us of our pure image of her are unsuccessful but comical); 'Ali Go Hard or Go Home' who runs, studies, and parties like she really means it; Boston Lizzy, who is succinct and hilarious, with razor-sharp humor; Juliana (Jules), who went to Episcopal, where I taught for two years, and Dressy Jessie, who brought 120 lbs of clothing with her.
Speaking of friends (and this is where I'll end for today), Liz Steffey, my best friend from Bowdoin, is coming to visit tomorrow! and staying for five whole days. This is delicious, for three (and many more) reasons:
1) I love her very much, miss her, and don't see her enough.
2) She is the person I choose to have stranded with me on a desert island. She will experience Oxford in Technicolor and under a magnifying glass.
3) She comes bearing Peppermint Patties, which I have not been able to find in Toronto, Dublin, or six different cities in Spain. I was at the end of my rope.

Welcome to my blog. I'm off to the farmer's market on Gloucester Green, and then to read Antony and Cleopatra. :)