Remembering Oxford (1): Cornmarket Street and North Parade

Dear readers, perhaps my greatest gain from the Oxford experience (besides learning that I can function on very little sleep, or that crepes can be launched between stairwells and even up through 2nd (3rd in the U.S.) story windows) has been an enlivened appreciation for history and memory. Britain's history goes back so much farther than that of the United States, and sadly it seems that there is very little passion for U.S. history outside using it to promote some political agenda. Whatever happened to history for the sake of illuminating a place, for welcoming guests into a place much broader than today? Don't get me wrong, I do have American friends who love history. But there is something significant about not only knowing the history of war and policies,and knowing the history of a place and people. This is something diverse, it is found in memory passed on from fathers and mothers to their children, and then their grandchildren. So, while the Internet may be obsolete by the time we have children or grandchildren, I think it's vital that we remember and share our memories. I'll start.

Cornmarket Street, Oxford, England, United Kingdom:

The first day I awoke in Oxford Cornmarket street seemed to be the desired destination of every explorer setting off from our house on Crick Road. I had stayed behind to finish unpacking, have a leisurely breakfast and then head out for a little walk. Well, I'm actually quite terrible with directions and didn't want to wander far on my own, so I made it only to North Parade that morning, discovering little grocers-- some with licenses and some who proudly advertised that they were off license (I still have no idea what that means)-- and cafes where you can get a latte for a pound. Later in the term, North Parade became the go-to place of the desparate, especially on our way to, or on breaks from, British Landscapes lectures and videos.

I don't remember exactly when my next attempt to Cornmarket took place. I imagine not long afterwards. But it soon became a daily habit to walk the 15 minutes to Cornmarket (and then usually to High Street on another trip that day) to visit Frewin Court and check my mail, or to get groceries, or study in Borders. The thing about Cornmarket is that it is only one segment of an ongoing road which begins as St. Giles, turns into Magdalen, turns again into Cornmarket, then St. Aldates, etc. . .

Cornmarket, however beautiful the other streets are, was my favorite street in this neverending story of pedestrians. A man with scruffy hair could often be heard playing the pipes, stomping out the rhythm. No matter how tired, stressed or rushed I was I couldn't pass him without smiling. It just happened. A young woman played her penny whistle on Cornmarket as well, though not as well as the piper piped. She had short, dark hair and put her heart and soul into every penny of that whistle, though. Towards Christmas, little brass bands and a Capella groups sang Christmas carols, and the whole street was decorated with icy blue lights that looked like icicles dripping water (they probably were dripping water, seeing as it was Oxford).

Then there were the red poppies. They are to me a memory of remembrance. In Britain as in much of Europe, there is a strong collective memory of the world wars. With the 90th annaversary of the end of WWI, the street was flooded with lapel poppies, the red flowers of Flanders Fields. Almost everyone wore one, young and old, people my age to my great-grandparents' age. At first this was hard for me to see without thinking of the Imperial War Museum, without thinking of the violence and death, the mourning and loss. Then I realized that this is exactly what we need to remember when we think of war, in some way, and what the poppies represent. We need to remember the red. I've blogged about this a bit earlier, but that was before I saw the poppies. Here at home, I do not wear flag pins or yellow ribbons. I do not give money to military organizations. But I found myself asking the woman outside Pret a Manger for a poppy, and donating my 50 pence into her dark blue bucket. Because these poppies do not feign glory, they do not shine like buttercups, and they do not smell of one nation. They are the deep color of blood, of the fields painted with pain, asking us to remember. I bought a poppy on Cornmarket Street, and wept.

They Will Keep on Remembering

In the words of Naomi Shihab Nye, "This is not a game. This was never a game."

What can I say as an outsider, watching from afar, caught in a different time zone, peering through news reports? Does anyone hear the bombs, the screams? According to BBC News, today was the most violence-filled day in the history of the Gaza Strip. You would think that would be hard to accomplish. I really don't know what to say right now as I take it all in, sitting on my sofa late at night. Inside I want to scream with each Palestinian woman, man, and child.

Will this day, this year be remembered as another 1948, another 1967? Will next year be different?

I Miss

I just realized that I wrote hardly anything about Oxford, almost nothing really. So, I will begin with a list of what I miss about it now that I am home, and we will go from there. In no particular order, except that I like to number things for easier reading:

1) The Victorian house in which I lived in North Oxford
2) The kind, fun, intelligent, hard-working, inquisitive, loving, faithful people who lived there with me, and who studied with me
3) Our Jr. Dean's antics. You know who you are.
4) Rick-rolling, and being Rick-rolled
5) Getting engaged and unengaged, and proposing and being turned down
6) The libraries
7) My philosophy tutor kindly pushing me to be critical and yet not overly skeptical
8) My poetry tutor telling me to write what I think, no matter what. No matter what.
9) Walking through the University Parks
10) Walking to student theatre productions (and enjoying them!)
11) The beautiful city of Oxford
12) Baking disappearing scones ;)
13) Conversations-- about theology, literature, feminism, history, identity, pacifism, poetry and how it breaks and heals us, etc.
14) Jane Eyre (that woman was all over our house)
15) Impromptu dance parties
16) Sarcasm and sardonicism with people I love
17) History vaster than my imagination
18) Red poppies on lapels
19) Girl time
20) Sunday tea
21) Dancing and singing along to Noah and the Whale with a kitchen of people
22) Scotland, and jokingly (and seriously) making fun of English custom in comparison)
23) I'm running out of words for the sounds and images flashing through my memory, the faces, the kind words, the laughter, the books, poems, walks, scoops of ice cream, biscuits, cups of tea and coffee, pheasant soup, proof-reads, hugs, and for that I am thankful. And glad I didn't miss a bit of it!

Philosophical Inquiry

This is a fresh poem, composed the other night, the night before my last philosophical theology tutorial (and the night before my second-to-last philosophy essay was due). Enjoy!

Philosophical Inquiry

I just want to know how
you are doing, my love—
how time, a distant relative,
has sketched your face
in lines and circles,
how you see the world
when your eyes are shut
and you are sleeping,
consciousness only memory,
or how you fill space
with your body, moving
past wholes and halves
of steps towards me,
this moment a justified belief.

I Am Very Bad at This Sort of Thing

It has been over two months since my last blog post, so basically I fail.

Thus far I have completed 12 out of 16 essays since the semester began.

And I am a tired person.

Remembering War

I should be working on my essay about faith. I really should, but everyone needs a little break now and then. My readers, that is, if they are still around, have not heard anything about Oxford. Well, you're not really going to hear any now either, but this has to do with the academic experience.

We went to London on a fieldtrip to the Imperial War Museum. It was relatively tasteful in its memoriam to those who experienced wars of several periods and places. But I still could not stifle the pained desire to be able to walk away from all these artifacts and forget war, to forget who shot who, who was a tyrant and who was an angel. Because if we don't forget some of that, we may continue to perpetuate war and hate for the sake of getting even, or simply by way of justification using past experience.

But we can't forget can we? To do so would dismiss the voices of persons' experiences. And isn't that war often does-- dismisses voices? If I were to have my memory erased of all traces of war and war history, where would the voice of non-violent resisters go? Where would I learn from our ancestors what is NOT worth dying or killing for? At the same time, I would not remember the voices of those who believe to kill for peace is just, or that violence can beget something other than more violence.

If we forget, we forget history, good or bad, the steps and struggles that have brought us to where we are. If we forget war, we forget the voices of women and men living their normal lives in the midst of a narrative more focused on conflict of the battlefield and political engagements than the conflict to put food on the table, to have hope, to survive.

In the Children and War exhibit, there were little boxes with trinkets children had been given or tried to take with them when they were evacuated during WWI. A little plush pony, an amber necklace, farm animals carved from wood, letters from parents to children on ships sunk by missiles. They never received those letters. They were written after the children were dead by parents unaware.

In the main room fighter planes hung from the ceiling with huge propellers. Tanks of many shapes parked in various places shone with green paint. And the largest bullet stood straight up, looking to the sky. But this was dwarfed by the massive bomb in the middle of the atrium, visible from all balconies.

And I can't help but think, that is not the stuff of life. Manipulated metal and explosives are not the stuff to base our memories upon. I'm pulled back to a poem by Eavan Boland about a piece of amber with its little bits, and I see the amber heart pendent in the war museum. And the little toys. Could we please remember those when we think of war? Could we please remember not only what was fought for and who fought on the front lines, but what was sacrificed by all, whose voices were disregarded, whose letters were never received.

I know we must remember, but I wish we could forget.

Poetry of War

I'm in England, congested and tired. So this will be brief. Much has happened since my last post, in my life, my community and the world.

But I will now go back in history. I'm currently writing an essay on the poetic contributions of women in the World Wars. It is difficult for me to turn objective, analytical eyes on these poems-- to dissect these women's efforts to pull something, no matter how small, together when everything around them was in shambles. But that is what I am doing. And it breaks my heart. I have not stated this on this blog before, though I'm sure by now it is quite obvious, but I am a pacifist. I believe in non-violent reconciliation. It is not easy or simple, and often times it is not logical by the standards of many. I understand this, and do not seek a debate, just to preface what I have to share tonight.

Reading the poems of women faced with war, some of them pacifists, many of them not, I lose myself to their pain and the little hopes they tell themselves to believe. I lose myself in wanting them to believe for the sake of their sanity and perseverance that what their men are doing is just. And I lose myself in the sadness that I know these men are broken (I'm also reading poetry by men). This makes me want to visit the places where these poets walked and lived, like St. Giles (I walk there every day) where May Cannan was born and raised, and Somersville College where Vera Brittain visited friends after receiving news her fiancee, Roland, had been killed at war. What will happen if I go there, stop there for a moment? Will I be able to walk away?