Friends, I find such joy here.
The only other experience with large cities that I have had is NYC, which is considerable bigger, I will grant. Oxford is both huge and tight. There are so many places to go and see but they all happen within such a small space. Oxford deals with history differently than America. We take 'historical' buildings and memorialize them with plaques and museums. We freeze them in time and build villages to emphasize how significant they are. Here there is a much more comfortable acceptance of anything old.
I think America has a a greater concern with the old aspects of our history because it is so new. In England you simply can't spend too much time on each piece of land or building that participated in some event worthy of the history books because there is just so much of it and it is assumed at part of the fabric of life. Of course, the historians do mourn the destruction of buildings and they do preserve and note places of importance, but it may just be with a small plaque or none at all.
That's not why I would stay in Oxford, though the history created in the buildings that surround me are the time periods which interest me.
I grew up in the country and value the stillness of the wild. I like being surrounded by greenery and having the wild places to wander in. But I also feel a little trapped by the emptiness. Trees don't offer the same kind of conversation which a good friend does and the animals, while enjoyable to watch are not the same as art created by humans. For a long time, I thought that you could only have one or the other. Live in proximity to nature or live in the city or suburbs, surrounded by people.
As I was walking through a cow pasture on my way to a concert on Saturday I realized that Oxford brings my two ideals together in harmony. There may be other places where this happens, but here the wild and the urban thrive together.
That, and people actually know have to have silence in the library.
Note the deer, not 5 minutes away from the city centre.
The only other experience with large cities that I have had is NYC, which is considerable bigger, I will grant. Oxford is both huge and tight. There are so many places to go and see but they all happen within such a small space. Oxford deals with history differently than America. We take 'historical' buildings and memorialize them with plaques and museums. We freeze them in time and build villages to emphasize how significant they are. Here there is a much more comfortable acceptance of anything old.
I think America has a a greater concern with the old aspects of our history because it is so new. In England you simply can't spend too much time on each piece of land or building that participated in some event worthy of the history books because there is just so much of it and it is assumed at part of the fabric of life. Of course, the historians do mourn the destruction of buildings and they do preserve and note places of importance, but it may just be with a small plaque or none at all.
That's not why I would stay in Oxford, though the history created in the buildings that surround me are the time periods which interest me.
I grew up in the country and value the stillness of the wild. I like being surrounded by greenery and having the wild places to wander in. But I also feel a little trapped by the emptiness. Trees don't offer the same kind of conversation which a good friend does and the animals, while enjoyable to watch are not the same as art created by humans. For a long time, I thought that you could only have one or the other. Live in proximity to nature or live in the city or suburbs, surrounded by people.
As I was walking through a cow pasture on my way to a concert on Saturday I realized that Oxford brings my two ideals together in harmony. There may be other places where this happens, but here the wild and the urban thrive together.
That, and people actually know have to have silence in the library.
Note the deer, not 5 minutes away from the city centre.
