woodnotwood
Friday, February 03, 2006
Magdalen
Who for thy sake would give their manlihood
And consecrate their being; I at least
Have done so, made thy lips my daily food,
And in thy temples found a goodlier feast
Than this starved age can give me, spite of all
Its new-found creeds so sceptical and so dogmatical.
The Garden of Eros ~Oscar Wilde
I have always had this wanderlust side of my spirit that prevents me from feeling comfortable if I stay in one place too long. Not necessarily that I like to move so much as I need to move about. I hate moving. Packing sucks, unpacking is the fun part.
I've always considered home more as a home base. A place to leave stuff you don't need for a trip. All through high school and college I traveled every weekend with my best friend Paige. We would leave our tiny little East Coast town and set out, map and tent stowed in the seat behind us, and go where the wind took us.
Now my restless spirit is screaming for release once more.
I want so badly to go to the UK. I have been to London, Reading and Oxford.
I traveled to London with friends. We hit the pubs and saw West Minster Abbey. We teased the Bobbies and tortured the guards outside Buckingham Palace, trying to get those poor fellows to crack a grin, but no. Stone faces. We watched the changing of the guard through the huge wrought iron fence. Rode on the top of double-decker buses and saw Big Ben and the Tower of London.
I drifted through the Ivied walkways of Oxford alone though. Magdalen. Solitary in my wandering. My being of no more substance than that of the spirits whose voices filled the air, reciting verse, left long in the past. My mind wandering with my feet. Thinking to myself 'here Oscar Wilde once walked also' and CS Lewis. Then I thought.... hmmmm and Dudley Moore? That made me giggle. What an amazing thing to think that my feet were falling in their hallowed footsteps.
Would it sound odd to say that I was actually glad to be alone on this journey? Not if you saw my traveling companions. If Paige had been with me then, yes, it would have been an incredible adventure. Twice the fun not to have to keep it bottled up. But Paige had gone off to college and I went off to Europe, so I carried her with me in my heart there. Thinking of the things she would have said if she had been with me.
I have a friend lecturing now at Magdalen. I wonder if she sees what I saw on my journey there? I wonder if, after so many visits, it has lost the ability to charm her as it did me? That enchantment that burned itself forever upon my memory. Frozen now. Glimpses, like snapshots, that roll in succession until they make motion and my feet hit those weather-beaten bricks once more. My thoughts find their own words.
And so tonight I sit and remember, as dark clouds hover above and the sky cracks open to release it's tears upon my world. I remember my stroll down sunny lanes and gazing out of the window as the train rushed me to new adventures. I remember a world so far from my own.
I long for it tonight.
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