Presently my first laundry here at Worchester College (pronounced Wuh-ster) is spinning in the machine. It serves to remind me that our first week of classes is past, Richard III is past, the "new" is past, that there are still three more laundries and weeks to go. I'm glad that that's how it stands: more to come than has come already.
Initially Oxford was ludicrous. Its age -- its most striking quality -- irked me. Maybe it was the regret of not being housed in an old building -- a projection thing.
Maybe it also had to do with a sense that clinging to the past so strongly is slightly ridiculous. Walking through the city the idea that history should be respected and valued with such vigour, maintained in essentially its original exterior form was odd. How are we supposed to use it? -- to look at the streetscape and imagine that people walked around in robes and hats and knee-high socks? To do so would be nearly impossible. The distance between contemporary society and 1300 (or whatever) when Oxford U. was founded made the whole city seem absurd.
This foolish idea of mine fell away while walking its streets, walking towards destinations -- to class, to a restaurant, to a cinema, to a park, to Tesco. That the city's activities happen to occupy ancient structures is the important part, not how the structures occupy their denizens. In colleges here, as my professor said, students have been sitting in the same rooms, soaking with sweat the same chair bottoms that their predecessors in 1300 (or whatever) did. It is Oxford as a living space, organized around and in old buildings, that creates the sense of continuity and tradition, not the material urban fabric.
So I learned to appreciate Oxford.
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