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| Georgiana Sook ('19) |
“The world surely has not another place like Oxford; it is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime and more than one to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
I have found articulating my experience of Oxford, England to be extraordinarily difficult. In many ways, the memories mirror the first few morning moments that follow a really good dream. Every fiber of my being wants to fight off consciousness and allow myself to be lulled back into the bliss of a world that felt more make-believe than any real place I’ve ever been. The soft glow around every scene whispers, “it’s only a dream; it’s only a dream.” And yet, a deep-rooted nostalgia washes over me, making me ache in a way that only the absence of a real person, place or thing can.
A bit like lost love, the initial stages of despair almost cause regret of ever experiencing it in the first place. Continued traveling to other cities brings its small joys, but there’s an ever-present, looming fear that maybe nothing will ever compare. A growing panic that maybe, at age twenty, you’ve already experienced the best of what the world has to offer you. There’s the giving up on trying to articulate your feelings to those around you because of unlikelihood of being understood. After all, it’s not that the place or the love was objectively the best, and you’d never try to make that argument. It’s that it was the best for you, and so it wouldn’t make any sense to expect others to empathize.
Oxford is a patient city, never rushing you, but rather insisting that you linger for just one more hour, one more drink, one more conversation. People walk slowly, as if they aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere because they know there is no better place to go or be than where they already are. It is a quiet, friendly place that manages to be beautiful without being gaudy, quirky without being alienating, bookish without being pretentious, and full of rich history without being rigid, stuffy, or dusty. Castle-like school buildings and cottage-like pubs combine feelings of wonder and homeliness. The grass is touch-me soft and more confident in its green than any I’ve ever seen. Flower petals lazily float down streams alongside couples peacefully punting. Each day it became more laughably apparent how such a place birthed Middle-earth, Narnia, and Wonderland. It’s hard for me to believe some people have the privilege of spending their whole lives there.
Only two days in, a few of us made a sport of trying to find things that weren’t lovely. We felt we had already used every word for beautiful one too many times. The game lasted a full five minutes before we gave up looking, agreeing that somehow ugliness didn’t exist here. There’s a unique sense of being at the heart of things and yet a calm that makes one feel removed from the rest of the world. It’s the rebelliously ever-tranquil eye of the tornado, anchored by a deep understanding of those things which are sacred and permanent. I’m left asking myself how one ever enjoys another Saturday tailgate when one could instead be hiking barefoot up a hill to picnic by a castle with a good book, a best friend, and a bottle of wine until sunset. If home were simply a place where all felt most right with the world, Oxford would certainly be mine. However, home is more than a place; it’s the people you love. Without hesitation or hyperbole, I admit that it is only for my attachment to those people that I return.
Georgiana Sook of Owensboro Ky., is a member of the McConnell Scholar Class of 2019. She studies English and philosophy at the University of Louisville.