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12 Rathmell

I'm in Oxford now. I've picked up my sub fusc (my academic robes) and moved into my room. It may sound gushing, but - I couldn't have been given a better room. Up five or so flights of narrow, creaking stairs onto a dark wooden landing to an attic under the eaves of the slanting roof, with a window that opens onto Holywell Street. Though bringing up my luggage was a nightmare, I have a bird's eye view of the spires and chimneys. I can see the cupola of the Sheldon building where I'll matriculate next week, and I hear the bells tolling every fifteen minutes. It seems invented.

I'll write more about my misadventures in London and post pictures. It seems ungrateful to say, but I miss a few familiar faces.

Comments

It's magic, Christy! How amazing this is...You have robes! and a slanted eave. You will have soon have the strongest thighs of your life!
Erin said…
Just like Lyra and Pan! Please be careful when you climb out onto the roof!
Annie Carl said…
It sounds lovely! And very Harry Potter-esc. Keep us posted on your adventures.
Thanks for your comments:) My thighs are improving as we speak. Sadly, Erin, only fire can provoke my roof antics...for now...

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Before I go

I'm at the airport with too many bags. A last minute weigh in required me to pull all my books out of my bags and redistribute the weight, while the service representative had to call Iceland (where I pass through en route to London), and the fifty pairs of eyes behind me glared and grew glassy. Though this morning the weather was pure, clear and copper-sunned, the fog has descended so low that the tips of the trees are nearly obliterated. This is Seattle. This is the city I know. Here's something I wrote a month or so ago, an ode to this city, its literary scene, and its inhabitants. When I graduated from a small Midwestern liberal arts college with the music degree I knew I might never use, I felt lost looking for What To Do Next. Despite the pressure I felt alongside my friends – future accountants, teachers, and doctors - to map out a life just so, a much respected professor suggested that each step in one’s life seems microscopic, a darkened footpath occasionally lit by a