Arcadia

I came to a strange realization this afternoon as my dog and I sunned ourselves on the grass in the backyard.

I am not immune to irrational obsession. Ok - I know that's not a realization. That's a long understood fact. But I mean it in the context of honey-colored nostalgia directed towards place.

I've written often about how some people grow up dreaming of visiting the Eiffel Tower and walking around with a baguette in their bicycle basket while a sexy and emotionally sensitive Français in stripes pursues them suavely on a Vespa. Their France is one of stinky cheese and eye-enchanting pastry and silk scarves and charm. These are the people who grow up and buy pillow cases on Etsy featuring fleurs de lis or anything with "French lace" in the title. These people - and I know they are numerous - are totally normal. They're dreamers. As Americans, we've been fed an image, nay, a sentiment, that France is where inexplicably beautiful things happen. Where dreams take form. Where we can go to be swept off our feet by sheer atmosphere. I'm not sufficiently dead on the inside to deny this France's existence. I've met her. I've shaken her hand. And I've met her gross drunk older brother who smells like dog shit and spends his time pushing people on trams and telling me I'm wrong about x, y, and z. France is a family of personalities. France is real.

Italy is also real. My mom loves to remind me that I first expressed an interest in going there when I was seven or eight and saw a PBS special on the making of gondole. What can I say? They're damn cool. I don't really remember that, but I do remember stepping out of the train station in Venice, sleep-deprived, cranky, hungry, bratty, and feeling so overwhelmed by what I saw in front of me that I burst into tears of awe. I felt like I belonged in those winding streets with all of those beautiful churches and paper makers and dark men and masks. Italy felt comfortable to me and I fell in love with the Italian aesthetic. I mooned over pictures and representations of Venice, and still do. I couldn't wait to spend my life there, working with my hands (and my brain), eating a pound of tomatoes every day. Gelato. Cats. Massive marble and travertine sculptures and ink bottles and stained glass. And then I spent a summer in Italy as an exchange student. And things changed. I watched an old lady brush off a trail of ants from the eggplant she had just sliced and was preparing to cook. I was forbidden from leaving the house with my hair wet because I would "surely catch a cold." I was told to stay away from a certain town because it was "full of Tunisians" who would "stab me just because." My host parents, (very good people I should note) appalled that I didn't eat beef or pork, would sneak it into my food whenever they could. Or just deny those mysterious brown bits weren't chicken... Italy is real too, and I quickly came to understand that blind idolatry wasn't compatible with my experiences beyond the average tourist.

It was that time in Ancona that made me promise myself I would travel with the eye of a realist, neither denying a place's intrinsic allure, nor allowing myself to buy into marketed mystique. I was seventeen at the time, so it's been a solid eight years. Only today did I realize that I haven't kept my word.

What's this, you ask? What city have I romanticized beyond reason? What place holds a tender and (so far) inimitable fire in my heart? I'll give you a hint: it's known for a few things: a massive library, damp stone, black robes, a pretty stellar dictionary, and many, many famous alumni. It's also the fictional home of my greatest hero.

Oxford, England.

Oh yes, friends. OXFORD.

I was reading the third chapter of The Golden Compass to my dog this afternoon, (he's already heard several books from Paradise Lost over the years) and it hit me. Why I am the way I am. Why I spend hours looking at pocket watches on Etsy. Why I feel like a grumpy old man stuffed inside a 25 year old woman's body. Why I love tweed and gas lamps and ivy. Having spent a year with Philip Pullman's work coursing through my being, I obviously recognize the influence he's had over just about every aspect of my life. But today the last pieces finally clicked into place. All of my peculiar penchants I couldn't explain but felt keenly. I don't think I've ever fully stepped out of His Dark Materials. Or at least, if I have, there's a part of me still wandering its pages.

February of 2009 saw my first visit to Oxford itself. I was in England visiting a close friend in London, and knew I couldn't head back to Bordeaux without making a very old dream come true. I had no idea where I would go once I arrived or what I might find, but after a quick walk from the train station to the city center, I knew I had made the right decision. With thirteen years of accumulated expectations, I trotted along in the drizzle beaming. It was more magnificent than I could've imagined. Stonier, damper, mossier, older, gargoylier, aloof and elegant. Totally captivating. After several hours of walking around colleges in search of Exeter, I made my way to the Boldeian Library gift shop and bought the few things I thought I might manage back to France and home unscathed, and then I did what I had to do - I returned to the train station, and left. But I promised myself I would return one day as a student (or a professor. Ha!). It felt right.

Well, friends, I've finally reached that point where I can't convince myself the dream can wait. I'm applying to Oxford for my masters.

Cross you fingers.


p.s. I will meet Philip if it kills me. Even if he calls me "Anna" the entire time.