Blog Reading

We made it! Notwithstanding a couple of wrong turns along the way.

I admire the plant’s tenacity as it clung to the fence in thick clumps.

Reading the letters to his friends, and seeing his playbills of performances at Cambridge, his youthful happy life before World War I, it all made me wistful for something I’ve never known.

Katherine and I were pleasantly, contemplatively silent on the walk back to Pembroke, but we did talk about Brooke and war and time and cows.

I was so obviously hapless through the whole flight, dropping plastic cutlery and fumbling with my television, that one of the attendants started calling me “Honey” by the end.

So many products from Germany and Spain, all heretofore unknown to me, all vegetarian-vegan-gluten-free.

I covertly took a couple pictures of the nut butter section.

My brand of whimsy.

I reveled in our cliched, young-adult delights.

Alternative, bohemian living before anyone knew what that is.

The garden behind the house was also gorgeous, and we were given free reign to romp in it.

Many of the church members were disgruntled by Vanessa and Grant’s work, since it was hardly traditional.

The house looked out onto beautiful English countryside, and had a pond, statues, another writing studio, and a bevy of orchard trees and sweet peas.

The only deterrent was the rain, which started to come down in buckets as soon as I walked into the Bodeleian Library gift shop.

The rain cleared a little – and I was wearing my indomitable rain jacket – so I walked through Oxford with my tattered and wet map to find Christ’s Church, the home of everyone’s favorite math lecturer Charles Dodgsen, aka Lewis Carroll.

And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection….

Ducklings just starting to molt swam through the creek.

Last week a few friends and I borrowed a boat from King’s college and punted on the Cam. [...] But to punt is a verb for pushing a boat down the river.

They congregate in the parlor to talk about their work, and of course about Lewis.

This is the original sign that hung from The Eagle and Child, the bar I visited on my first trip to Oxford. Lewis’s publisher salvaged it from the pub when they decided to get rid of it, and gave it to the Lewis Foundation.

Ah, to peruse a museum at leisure!

It was fun to see pictures of (antiquated-looking) people and realize we had read and loved the same authors.

After my typical commune with nature, I walked back into town and sat down at Cobbles ‘N Clay, a cafe and paint-your-own ceramics studio.

I felt a little guilty having the time of my life in Haworth, when in the Brontë’s time this town was pretty retched.

The tough love friend: the friend you go to when you do not want pity or someone to commiserate with.

He never intended to detonate it, he said later; it was a ruse, to convince the authorities that he had real bombs on the plane.

Without an older sister, you never have the opportunity to ogle clothes that aren’t yours and, as a result, you couldn’t find out until later in life that you’re a klepto.

Two evenings ago, after a dreadful night shift, I, Rosalind Fairfax, reeking of stale espresso and tepid, slimy poached eggs, sauntered over by request to the bone-chilling, poorly insulated first floor of a West Village townhouse.

The inhabitant was a regular customer of mine: a peculiar young man with whom I feel a particularly unique and sparkling camaraderie (it must immediately be stated, however, that this eloquent phrasing to describe what is most likely pure, violent LUST would have felt appropriate for any of the below, had one asked me at time of interest).

He’s all spindly and sickly looking and reminds you of the French royalty who would never stop bleeding if they got cut and had to be shielded from the world at all costs in order to survive.