A look back through a few journal entries . . .
Entry 1 June 16, 2012: Oxford
Today, my first trek to special collections. An edge of not knowing the procedure involved. I bussed down to High Street and found myself in a new part of Oxford for me. The wind was still up and I felt really free and happy. I passed the “Sighing Bridge,” and took some photos for a later painting.
Since all of the libraries are closed on Sunday, I decided to train to Bath to see where Mary of Modena, as legend has it, bathed, afterwards finally giving birth to a son that lived—but that began the wheels turning for the Glorious Revolution and Mary and James II’s flight into French exile.
I returned to Art Cottage, dropped off my heavy backpack, and went out searching for a place to eat. I walked all the way back over the Magdalene Bridge—stopping to watch a punt boat driver “punting” a young couple under the bridge.
I found Merton House where Queen Henrietta lived while her husband, Charles I, (grandfather of Charles II and James II) who had to escape from London for a few years and conduct business from what is now the chapel in the old Bodleian Library.
A return home to reading Joan Didion’s book, Blue Nights, somewhat of a sequel to the Year of Magical Thinking. Blue Nights is a treatise on aging and dying more or less; Didion is an incredible, lyrical writer. Jesse and I saw Vanessa Redgrave perform Year of Magical Thinking on Broadway—a one-woman show—about the death of Didion’s own daughter and husband, only a few weeks apart.
Didion writes in Blue about actress Miranda Richardson’s death. She was Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter and died from the same traumatic brain injury that Tony suffered, about two months after his—she didn’t get treatment, he did; that was the only difference. Didion and Redgrave are close friends. Knowing this makes Redgrave’s Broadway performance even more poignant.
Entry 2, one week later . . . Bath, Salisbury, Oxford.
Bath, visiting the ancient Roman baths—truly unforgettable.
I got a wild hair and took a bus to Stonehenge: It was too close to pass up! Mystical. Worth it!
Saturday is a perfect day to watch Oxford unfold—people spill out into the streets, a mix of antiquity and the modern. This trip I have been mesmerized by chimneys. I rested aching feet in a book store and when I emerged, it had rained. I learned early on, always keep an umbrella and hat in my backpack. The last time I was here, England was suffering through an intense drought, so much so that I remember my professor saying that because of restrictions on watering gardens, he would take his plants into the shower with him. Not a problem this summer. The weather’s moodiness suits me, as well as cool temperatures! I don’t think the thermometer has reached 70 yet. Yippee.
