There's a sorrow in my heart. Things have improved so much in the past few weeks, and I'm so grateful. I feel so much more calm, at peace. And yet there's still this sorrow poking at the side of my heart, like a delicate fish bone caught in your throat while you're at a dinner party. It's not big enough to cough up, and not thin enough to swallow. It's this abnormal size, and every time you swallow, you feel a sharp tinge. And the only thing you can do is to try swallowing thick bread, in hopes that it will wash it down. That's what this sorrow is like. Only this sorrow isn't in my throat, and can't go away with a swallow or two. This sorrow is deep inside, and I'm not sure how to access it.
I guess I've begun to realize how much is out of my control, and how little I have, not emotionally, and not in an abstract sense. No, I'm rich in all the things that really matter, like family and love and faith. What I don't have is the superficial, the things that "don't bring happiness." Basic luxuries, like a predictable living situation. Like a steady income, like....why can't I even say it? Like money. I'm so broke, and so in debt.

You grow up thinking that as long as everything else is there, as long as you have all that matters emotionally, money is insignificant. You grow up thinking you'll be happy with less. But then when you have less (and by less, I mean living off money you don't have), you start to be overcome by this disease. You start to be taken over by numbers. Numbers! They're everywhere! $3 for blueberries. $2 for a bus ride home, so that I don't have to feel like my bones are breaking from cold. $.75 is how much I paid for the last three hours of heating in my flat. $10 for a toaster. $ 2 for a Latte, 1.80 for an Americano.$8 for dinner with friends. $4 for warm house socks. Everything is numbers. What you eat, what you wear, where you sleep, what you bathe with, what you walk in, what you talk in. They're everywhere. The moment you open your eyes, like a pack of wolves, like a bug infestation...and all of a sudden come 11:30pm, you realize you've spent so much of your day just making choices and navigating between numbers, constantly deciding whether your comfort is worth it, whether your craving is worth it, whether you deserve it this time....and it becomes like a sharp bone rooted deep inside of you, jabbing every time you make a move, make a choice, and you start to feel so injured and so vulnerable and so so so so so ugly for even thinking about it as much as you do, because everything in your life is telling you to have faith in your future, and yet you just can't let go of reading the numbers.

"Ratiocinative" : (noun) the process of logical reasoning

Really??!! Sounds more like a disease.

On second thought, that may be fitting.

Infidelity

I’ve found a new walking buddy. Quite cute, in fact. Not too tall. Fashionably colored. With two wheels, two handles, and a cushiony comfy seat. Sounds like a bike, you say? Why, yes, that’s what I thought, at first. But I have since come to think otherwise. You see, bikes are meant to be transportation vessels. They’re meant to take you places. But that’s just not how our relationship works. Hidden beyond its twisted exterior, I think there was a bike somewhere in there, at some point. Maybe even a solid, strong, sexy one. Maybe one that made all others of its kind jealous, but those were the olden days. Now, this bike is just a man, like you and me, living every day, as if it’s his last.  

Last week, on a cold, wet morning. I locked the front door, and as I walked towards my friend, I told him. “Friend, I’m late. I should have been at the library by now. We’ve got to run.” We pulled out of my driveway and turned onto Banbury Rd. It was raining, quite hard. And we chugged along quite fine for a good five minutes. Then there was an intersection. A busy intersection. A four-way intersection, with kids crossing. An intersection with a red light, shining straight in our eyes. Well, in my eyes. I squeezed the brake, and nothing happened. I pulled it so hard towards me, that my nails were grinding into my palm, and still nothing happened. We were still running at full speed. That’s when I realized that Confuscious had gone blind. It snapped it’s brake. And instead, we took a nice walk. 

For forty-five minutes.

In the rain. 

To the library.

This is not the first time. In fact, this has happened so often that every bike co-op in Oxford knows us. Often, I’ll see the man who works at Summertown Cycles in Zappis Café in the centre. He gives me that smile, the kind of smile you give your girlfriend when you know her boyfriend’s cheating. Last time he I took my bike in (when it’s other brake snapped), he told me, “I’m sorry. I think it’s time you faced the facts. It’s time.”

Every week, the number of unexpected, long walks Confuscious and I take increase. This past week, for example, we took five. How many times did I ride my bike to campus, you ask? Let me think…..Oh yes, that would be five.

We stopped to walk Every. Single. Day.

I think it’s time we had the talk. He’s got to know. This is inappropriate. It can’t keep happening. I’ve just got to man up and say it to him. I’ve got to tell him: I’m married. There’s only one person in the world I’m meant to take long, unexpected walks with hand in hand. I can’t keep doing this.

Yes, it’s time for the talk. But I just don’t think I’m ready to be a heartbreaker. For now, I’ll just continue to leave my friend unlocked in shady places overnight, and see if, like all disloyal friends, he’ll jump ship when a younger thang comes walking along. 

The Granny Smith apple core at the edge of a coffee saucer

The single carnation set to balance on the edge of the English Department’s bike rack

The old man whose slowly biking his way down Broad St. whistling a tune I can’t recognize

The old woman whose taking a break from weeding at the edge of her vegetable box

the single star that’s somehow fought its way out from under the clouds to show itself off in the cube of sky my window holds

chocolate sprinkled across a cappuccino

the touch of another human being against my shoulder, on a crowded sofa, in the palm of my hand

Every time I read Sohrab Sepehri’s poems I’m awed by his ability to  notice such fine threads of vibrancy in life’s tapestry, but I think this week I’ve learned: It’s only when the flame inside you is so weak that the smallest rush of cold breath could put it, that you burn through every potential piece of warmth.

I’ve realized since coming to Oxford that my writing process is considered quite strange. I often go through at least three to four full drafts of work before I start to think about grammar, word choice and all those juicy details. In fact, my first draft is a ‘free-write’ of everything I think on the topic I’m writing about. As strange as my process is, it means that I usually have a full draft before most of my colleagues , though my first draft will probably require far greater editing/rewriting than their first draft. But I find this ‘free-write’ process not only incredibly enjoyable, but also essential. All students in the humanities know that you don’t REALLY know what you’re really even striving to say until you’ve finished the final sentence of your first draft. To write the first draft, I usually put on good music and then just start writing with the rule that I can’t stop for a good two hours and by then I will have all my ideas out in some sort of logical order.  Once it’s over, I’m exhausted. Try writing for even ten minutes non-stop. It’s not easy. It demands a state of intense concentration. But there’s a thrill. It has speed. It has drive. It takes on a power of its own. Soon you find yourself sitting behind the wheel, just taking it in, enjoying the ride, the view, only occasionally making a move to make sure that words don't jut out too far from the lane.

But this time it’s different. I can’t start. I just don’t have the energy right now. I started out in the library, and couldn’t get through a paragraph. Now I’m sitting in a coffee shop, an Americano and vanilla pastry later, I’ve barely moved through a page without stopping from mental weariness. How will I ever turn this in by tomorrow? Everything in my life has become so exhausting. I’m climbing to get to the top of a slide, and with every step I’m finding that the ladder is getting taller and taller.

Nests & Things

If I was asked what animal I would like to be, I would say bird (at least this week, I would). Not because they can fly (to me, running is like flying).But because the nest I saw yesterday, on the branch of the tree painted in autumn’s shades of red, yellow and orange, nestled in the walkway between my college and my department building, was very messy. The nest was disheveled. It had bits of branches sticking out of its sides. It had pieces of yarn, and paper candy wrappers, and even a bit of cloth poking out its sides. It was messy and disorganized, and yet perfect in every way because I knew that the bird who had built it earlier in the Spring loved it. Not only was it just enough for her, but it was where she fluffed out warmth to her eggs. It was where she taught her babies to fly and watched them learn to swallow.

And yet, she left it. She flew away and left the home with all of its woven memories. Wherever she is, she knows that the autumn that’s easing into winter will unravel her home and all its branches will fall to the earth.

But she doesn’t mind. When it’s time again, she’ll build another. Maybe again on this tree. Maybe one in a walkway that gets more sun. Maybe, not even in Oxford.

Last night when I got home, I rolled up my sleeves put on thick washing gloves and cleaned the bathroom, kitchen and my bedroom. Once all the loose paper in my room was in ‘neat’ piles across my desk, and my clothes were all hidden in one way or another in the closet or in my drawers, I knew I was ready. I put my backpack in the center of the room. I reached in and pulled out what I’d been thinking about all day—the two big pomegranates I had bought from the small market. I placed each of them on my bookshelf, nestled between my favorite novels and the photos of Mehdi and my sister. And then I stood back. Yes, this home is ready for the weekend.

This morning I woke up and noticed my crooked ceiling lamp. The broken fridge irritated me. The water in the shower that’s either burning hot or freezing cold annoyed me. The desk chair with its broken back nearly drove me mad. The lamp shade that’s dislodged and wobbles dramatically from one side to another….

There is so much I must learn from birds. 

Walls at their breaking point

In the middle of our complex lesson on Attached Pronouns in Classical Arabic, our tutor slipped in a short aside on the “guarding alif.” The alif that appears in perfect plural verbs. It’s not read. It’s silent. It just stands there like a wall, he said, as he drew a sharp, vertical line down on the white board. It stands there to let you know that this word ends here. And its stays there. Well, that is until we need to attach a pronoun or something to it. With a swipe of his thumb, he obliterated the guarding alif and gave it ownership.  

Last night I came home from Paris. I’d spent three days talking incessantly to one of my dearest friends. When I rode to the airport on Friday, I felt like I was scrambling out of Oxford for a breath of fresh air. Last night, when I returned, I climbed up the three sets of stairs to my attic room. I opened the door and felt the rush of iced breeze. My radiator had been off for the length of my three day trip, and steeping into my room felt like stepping into a freezer. The central heat was off for the night. I changed and slipped under my duck feathered duvet, and pulled another blanket over myself. The air was so cold that my forehead was starting to pound. I shut my eyes, and while I was so exhausted, the freeze in my nose was so alarming I couldn’t sleep. I spent hours going back and forth between suffocating under my blanket and bringing my head out only to freeze. The night passed. I woke up with the headache I’ve had all day. Sleeping in cold isn’t unfamiliar. I do it often, only not in a room with walls. I sleep in the cold when I’m in the mountains, when I’m near the highest peak in mainland America, when I’m at the edge of the Sierra lakes. I take the cold as a gift from the star ceiling over my head. But in this room, in this house, in this city that is defined by its medieval walls, this air was painful.

This headache has been a lens. Everything I’ve done today, touched today, I’ve seen and read and experienced through this headache and the story that came with it. I’m immersed in a world of invisible walls: my hard book cover, the gloves that protect my fingers from the slashing breeze as I ride my bike, exhaustion, the locked café doors.

I’m reading a book about ultrarunners, people who never ran a day in their life, who become proof of man’s unlimited and boundless capabilities by running hundreds of miles in unimaginable natural terrain. They break every physical, mental, and emotional boundary we think exists. I’m close to the finish line, only 20 pages left to read, and I can’t decide if this book has been uplifting or miserable. Because every time I’m confronted with such inspiration, with people who break every link in their chain, I’m upset by how bounded I feel. Knowing what we can achieve and knowing how to achieve it are different from actually believing you, yourself are capable of it.

Walls are as easy to bring down as they are to build. I’ve realized this even more from this painful and stubborn headache. It’s not the swipe of the finger that really matters, but what we attach ourselves to once we’re standing in the vast boundless openness before us that gives it meaning. 

There is such an unsettling silence without him. I never realized how accustomed I've grown to having someone always present in my space. The strange thing is that I love solitude, or so I thought. It isn't that I no longer love solitude. It's that I've realized that I like the solitude that comes by choice. I like pulling away from it all, but I like to keep him close. I don't expect us to talk when we're in the same space. We don't have to do anything. Just as long as he's there, as long as he's in my space.
He's so far.
This time difference is brutal.
Why am I here?

Yosemite Backpacking Glen Aulin

Mehdi and I have decided to start writing down our backpacking experiences, so that we can remember the details of the places we're going. At first I thought of starting a new blog, but then considering the number of un-contributed to blogs that I've started, I decided to just write them down in here.

I'm going to start with our most recent trip. 

To backpack in Yosemite, one needs to either be very organized and a plan far ahead, or be willing to endure a series of strenuous early hour-long wait sequences. We, of course are far from organized, so to obtain a backpacking permit for our chosen "Glen Aulin" trail, we had to stand in line the day before. 

Mehdi and I left for Yosemite around 2pm July 25th and arrived at the park's gates around 5pm. Our backpacking permit pick-up location was one the other side of the park at Tuolumne Meadows. From the entrance to Tuolumne Meadows is about 1.5 hours. Once there, we went to the closest campgrounds and realized they were all packed full. We had heard that in order to successfully obtain a permit, people stand in line form 3am. To make sure that we had an opportunity to get the permit, we decided to spend the night in the car and hit the line at the break of dawn. The car was surprisingly comfortable, once all the food was stowed in the bear boxes and the chairs were brought down, the sleeping mats were laid out, the sleeping bags unrolled and Mehdi's position confirmed so that his long legs would be comfortable. 

Our alarm went off at 5:30, and we jumped out of the car with our jetboil, tea bags, biscuits and two mugs to stand in line. We were first! I sat on the rock right behind the sign that read "The Line Starts Here." Almost instantaneously, several other groups came out of their car and stood in line. The Tuolumne permit office didn't start giving out permits for the next day until 11am, so safe to say all of us in line ended up becoming pretty good friends by the end. 

Once we had our permit, we headed over to the backpacking base camp and reserved a campsite, and then went and explored Yosemite Valley. It was Mehdi's first time. It was also our anniversary! And we searched for a nice place to eat lunch, and escape the heat and couldn't find anywhere but the crowded food court with frozen burgers. :-) 

The backpacking base camp was very cozy and crowded. Our site alone had at least 4 parties camping in it, but everyone was really friendly. We met a young man who was doing the entire John Muir Trail in 11 days for his fourth time! Quite the inspiration. 

At 7:30am the next day, we met my mom and Milad at Tenaya Lake. We parked one car there and all drove in the other car to the Glen Aulin trail head. After putting all food goodies in the bear boxes at the trail head and adjusting our bags we started on the trail at 9:00am. 

The trail was about 6.5 miles. It was gorgeous, stunning, and not difficult at all. It was mostly flat with a few downhill stretches. The trail rain along limpid waters and across large granite surfaces. If it weren't for the stacked rocks, we would have surely lost our way. At about 3 hours, we got to the sign marking Glen Aulin, and it was another .3 to High Sierra base camp. We walked for another 20 minutes before we were welcomed by a wide, but short waterfall running into a dark blue and green swimming hole. 

We crossed two bridges over the water and then entered High Sierra camp. High Sierra camp has a store and several tent lodges. You have to walk past the lined tents and the dinky store before getting into the backpacking campground. We picked an amazing campsite farther away and more elevated. 

A note of caution: Bear boxes are only located near High Sierra Camp. There is only two and they are incredibly fetid and disgusting. We were very happy that we had brought our own bear canisters, (one for every two of us). 

Our first night was incredible. My mom and Milad took a nap since they had been driving from 2am, but I couldn't resist. I wore my swim pants, and went right down to the waterfall. The water was so much warmer than I expected. It was so refreshing and calming to swim in natural waters. Mehdi came along, he waded up to his knees and took photos. We made a cup of tea, as I shivered from the cool breeze on my wet clothes, before making our way back to camp. After changing and drying off, I woke up my mom and Milad and we made coffee and tea and snacked on dried fruits under the sun on a large piece of granite, secluded from any other group. Afterwards, I followed my mom down to the brook using the small path we had in our campsite. And in less than 10 minutes we were both in the water. We tempted Milad in, as well. 

On Saturday, we day hiked to the "Water Wheels." It was only 3.5 miles, but a steep downhill in one direction. We found a magical place to sit and eat lunch right at the edge of the Water Wheels. Our hike back was an intense climb in striking, draining heat. But once we returned, we stopped at the Glen Aulin falls and all went in for a swim. I was so happy that I seized the moment and swam yesterday, because on Sunday the water felt far far colder. 

On Sunday, we woke up at 7:00, ate a delicious breakfast of oatmeal and peanut butter and then backed up. We were taking a different route back, that began at the same place that marked the "Glen Aulin" location and "High Sierra Camp .3 mi." It went past Murphy Creek and came out at Tenaya Lake. The pros of this trail was that it offered variation in scenery. It moved through forests rather than large open spaces of granite. For this reason, it also offered a cool shade. But it was filled with mosquitos. We could barely sit for a water break without feeling at least two pinch at our legs or necks. It was also relatively flat. We made it back in 4 hours, drove back with the car parked at Tenaya Lake, picked up our goodies from the bear box, returned the bear canisters to Tuoloumne Meadows and began the four hour drive home (with a stop for a hearty pizza lunch, and iced coffee). 

There's a rainstorm/windstorm/thunderstorm in the middle of June. It's kind of miserable for us, sitting inside, staring at computers, withstanding the grueling process of editing dissertations. But the trees--the trees' leaves and branches look like they're swinging, headbanging, turning, dancing. Their trunks like the strong, defined arms of a dance partner. The grass shivers, as if its giggling.
How genuinely nice it must be for the rain to feel so appreciated, so needed. What a reward for such a responsibility.

Another Sleepless Night

Last night was another sleepless night. I drank a cup of herbal tea and even forced myself through twenty pages of Mill on the Floss, genuinely one of the slowest paced books I’ve come across. And yet, I still managed to toss and turn for several hours before grabbing my Ipad and searching, for what I’m sure must have been the 50^th time since I’ve arrived at Oxford: How to relieve insomnia. I reviewed the list of 20, 25, 40 “helpful  tips to never have trouble sleeping.” And then flicked on the light to warm a cup of milk, mostly out of curiosity to see if the tip: “A cup of warm milk and Oreos calms the nervous system,” actually had any merit. It didn’t.

As I laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling, frustrated at how often this process repeats itself, this strange feeling of familiarity swept over me. Not past-few-days familiar, or even past-few-months familiar, but very familiar. I remembered lying awake just like this at the age of six, noticing the ways my toes created two mountain peaks in my turquoise blanket. And then, at the age of ten. And then all throughout the ages of eleven to seventeen. I resolved all my sleepless nights by dragging myself out of bed at 4:30am, making my way to my sister or parents’ rooms, and pushing them over to make room for myself by their side.

In the few weeks before my wedding, my mother said, “I’m glad you’re getting married. You won’t have trouble sleeping anymore.”

“Why?,” I asked. “What does that have anything to do with it?”

“You always sleep better with someone at your side.”

I shrugged it off, and never even noticed a connection.

But last night, I put it all together. I don’t remember a single sleepless night from the past two years of my married life. There was not a single night in the five days that Mehdi visited me last month that I had trouble falling asleep. 

It’s not fear. I used to think it was stress, but I’m relaxed at this point. Considering how draining writing a dissertation is, it’s not an excess of energy.

It’s almost as if part of me has just never gotten over leaving my mother’s womb.  

My Graduate School Companion

an email from my sister, finalizing her decision on our summer travels

Thank you for your application of admission. We, at the University of Indecisive Travels have gone through your application and have made a decision. We apologize that it took some time, quite a bit of time, we had an influx of very high qualified applicants and the decision making was very difficult. To give you an idea of what we took into consideration: grades, GPA, how cute you are in the photo you attached, and how much fun our committee had in trying to decipher your name! Wow! What were your parents thinking?! I would be SO curious to meet them. 

Furthermore, one member of our admissions Committee by the name of Rey Zing, was very very indecisive (more so then the rest) However, after much thinking, crying, banging her head to the wall, and just straight up staring into space she decided that she no longer wants to be a part of the committee and needs to take a break and go to Great Britain instead. This threw us all off, as we were one man (woman!) down! When we asked Rey Zing why she is doing this, she said that she needs to detach from this tough decision making and that she doesn't want peoples futures to be stuck in her hands. She said she is not God...I was surprised. Instead, she said she wanted to go trek through Great Brittain.... on foot... (that crazy b*$#%!) with her sister. We were all wondering who this mysterious sister was that suddenly attracted her to the Googer Booger (as we call Great Britan here in the office) so we asked her about it. She said that she and her sister have never explored a foreign land together, and that it was in her utmost desire and interest to hold a travel book, and explore foreign lands with her, discover, discover, and learn. She had this odd excitement in her, when she said she really wanted to munch on a 'very welsh breakfast' and discover the history of random ruins along the hills and coast, and listen to her sister tell stories of medieval times and things she has learned and discovered throughout her studies. Rey Zing also kept drawing picture of her and her sister sitting on green hills with their feet dangling off a brick ruin wall, singing Irish melodies and nibbling on biscuits...yes nibbling. In these photos, oddly, she had a smile drawn on her face, her sister had a smile drawn on her face too but for some reason she was also holding a vacuum on the hills! Odd! Regardless, Rey Zing was out the door in about 2 minutes after making this decision. Mind you, all this was said by her in a very fake and desperate English Accent. All of us here in the office, felt so BAD for this mysterious sister! We were worried she did not know what she was truly in for.


.......that was until....until....we took a closer look at the drawing she made of her sister, and felt sudden Deja Vu....that sister...was

.....you, Choosefeer....................

Choosefeer, we are at a loss for words, here at the admissions office. Confused. Struck. Confuddled. Regardless we would like to say that you have been admitted to the University of Indecisive Travels. Please be safe and stay alive when Rey Zing visits you (do you even know about this?) We really want you here at our university.



Admissions Head

Yesterday, I saw my best friend sitting next to the love of her life. I've heard of their relationship in one form or another for nearly ten years, and yet have never seen them together. Unfortunately, it wasn't in person, but electronically through Skype. But even then, I felt this calmness, this content for several hours after hanging up. It felt so right, to see her smiling at his side, playing with her hair in the middle of a conversation at his side, looking over at him. She's a confident woman. At times, annoyingly confident. It almost feels like I've known her all this time, but have only just seen her, in all her vulnerability, overcome by love. I wonder if she realizes how much more this suits her. I never imagined that I wouldn't be able to be a part of her wedding. I feel like I've written this line a hundred times, because I've thought it over so many times. There are a handful of people who you always imagine seeing on their wedding day. She's one of them.

I just coined a word for my dissertation--giantism. To mean the 'identity' of a community of giants. Yes, that is JUST how cool my major is.

Spin

Spin me
     so my colors blur
     and you mistake my legs for my arms
     my face for my brown hair died blonde
Tighten me into a ball of yarn
     somewhere rural, and foreign and unknown
     where one man's roof is the other's front yard
     leave me at the doorsteps of an old lady’s home
Where she can knit me in a jumper, a pair of tiny socks, a hat, a cover
     she can drape over her worn out legs
     or over a teapot for tea faster brewed.
Don’t let me unravel
            this time
            and form only borders
            empty spaces.

To put it lightly, graduate school takes your confidence and blows it out of its nose. I’ve realized just how thick-skinned you have to become to make it out of graduate school unscathed. I had a bit of an emotional breakdown this term, because I just realized that my work was no longer just ‘work’, and was beginning to define me too much. Life is strange, because in the week following my emotional breakdown, I was faced with so many strange situations. It was as if the universe took a week off to give me perspective. One of those odd occurrences from this week was that my friend randomly gave me a canvas, a paintbrush and four bottles of acrylic paint. We’ve never spoken of painting before. In fact, I don’t paint. I’ve never painted. I’ve never even held a paintbrush in my adult life. But I’ve started painting, and I love it, not because I feel like I can paint, but because it puts my head and body in a different place. I like the feel of paintbrush on canvas. It’s gentle. It’s quiet. And its reminded me, more than anything, of why I love writing. Writing in graduate school has been so loud and so fierce—the constant tap-tap on the keys in this laptop have begun to sound like a teacher thrashing a ruler against a desk, reminding me of how far behind I am, and where I need to be. But I’ve begun to see (again) the soul of writing in painting. Writing is gentle. It’s a whisper. Every letter a detail in a landscape. I don’t think there’s anything quite as beautiful.

In the sheer silence of the library, I’m often overtaken with this rush of feeling to hug people I see studying. Not people I know. Not people I’ve met. Not even people who are aware of themselves. No, I feel like wrapping my arms around people who are focused in a book, so lost in what they’re doing, that I can see, I can feel that there’s something surrounding them, that’s taken them away from where they are. I want to feel their warmth, that warmth that comes from a place, removed from here, a warmth coming from the pages of a world only they can read.

They remind me of preening birds. No, they remind me most of kids at Golestan Preschool. Those five year olds in my class who held pens and lost themselves in the blank page, so lost that what came out of the pen was not ink, but parts of themselves. They were in that pen, and they’d built a world around themselves that I couldn’t see, but that they’d try so hard to explain:

“We’re on a train, See! I’m riding a lion!” he’d say, after the bubble of imagination snapped, and he’d come to, and I wished I wasn’t there so that he could stay there, so that he wouldn’t feel the need to come back.

They come so rarely--times when adults look and act like a kids, unaware, consumed by a place they’ve created.

In the Margins of a Research Book...

"Ancrene Wisse, a well-known and lavishly praised but little studied religious work of the early thirteenth century."

A boy (I'm assuming off handwriting) has underlined "little studied" and then in the righthand margin written, "Maybe in California dear but not in Oxford."

Directly above it, someone has written in black in with an arrow pointing to the comment, "Prick"

Directly above that, in pencil, with an arrow pointing to "Prick," someone's written "The prick is right."

Then below the main comment:

Directly below, in blue ink "Ugly arrogance."

Then below that, in pencil, with an arrow pointing up towards the main comment, "But it's quite funny."

Part of some amazing photos I read about in an essay on the medieval practice of 'reading'. Isn't it interesting that, in the second image, rather than look at Mary with the baby, the young woman is flipping through a book, with her fingers between pages?

This Tree

This tree is confident, not arrogant. She trusts her strength against what comes. Holds herself high enough, but in humility. She only takes the space she needs, narrow at the base where other life must grow, but limitless in its top. Opens with elegance and grace. Doesn't bend to wind, nor curl onto itself in rain. Lets snow settle on her branches, flake by flake, because she knows that just as it came, it shall leave, drop by drop. And what makes her beautiful is what she's endured. Every scratch, every bruise- a new pattern on her base. And though her skin only thickens, she hasn't lost her vulnerability, nor her sensitivity. It only takes a scratch to expose the raw green that rests behind the thick, rough brown. Only takes a prick to feel the wet, freshness of her tears on your fingers. And yet she never drops her gaze, nor turns away. She is patient, and it is only because she is patient that she is the center of this landscape, the shelter above my head, the surface I lean against, the reflection I aim to see in the mirror.

She feeds me my breaths.

Yes, finally, I have found home.

Yesterday was the first time I casually sat on a train and rode through a landscape covered in snow. A white horse only visible because of dark eyes. Sheep grazing, rather 'digging' through to graze. Men and women, holding hands in trails parallel to tracks. Children sledding on small mounds of snow. I'm in the British Library, sitting at a desk in a beautiful room, still awed by the fact that I can order a book from 1200, put it at my desk, flip through its pages. I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm still on that train, that all I need to do is turn my head and look out of a window, past my reflection, and catch sight of a river, hardened just enough to hold a thin layer of snow. Ducks standing in places where they once swam, turned upside down and fished. A fallen tree's branches caught frozen in a creek.

So I Don't Get Too Comfortable

Where are you from?
No, where are you from from?
Some president you got there, no?
How did you get here?
Your parents ran away?
No? Then why is it that you don't cover your hair?
So, which do you like better, here or there?
How is it that your English is so good?
How funny. What a strange combination. Now how is it that an Iranian girl ends up studying English literature?

We were standing in one of Ici's ridiculously long lines on College Ave. It ran down the block. We stood at the trunk of the third tree from Ici's door. There was a father, holding a dog's leash in one hand and his boy's hand in the other. His daughter was swinging herself around her his legs. We'd been standing in the line for five minutes predicting the flavors. There was this moment of silence before we both turned to each other.
"We don't have to get ice cream from here."
"No, we don't."
"I mean, we could walk down the block and get ice cream from Haagan Dazs."
"Yea, it's just as good."

We left the line, both knowing quite well that we were settling for something far inferior, that no ice cream beats Ici ice cream.

I find myself in memories like these. Random memories with no significance. Yet, in those moments when I'm digging my face into my scarf so my lips don't go numb, I have a Tesco bag in one hand, and an ice cream in the other, thinking about the medieval relationship between Christians and Muslims that I find myself in some mundane moment of my past life.
I always smile.

Memory is a strange thing, turning moments of nothingness into 'moments' worth recalling.

I need to leave. The pavement that marks the circular route I take to class and back is worn, and I am struggling to keep my head lifted to the tops of the buildings and the branches of the trees. The sky is beginning to drop too low, closing in on me. Maybe it's because I'm weary of this Friday when I get the mark for my paper last term and I have my first dissertation meeting. Whatever it is, the fire in me is beginning to dwindle and another weekend alone in this room will put it out. I need to leave.