Dancing in my PJs :)

Check-in tonight was not in Hall. {This is your warning- I am not going chronologically because the last five minutes eclipsed the entire day.}

Do you know how I came to find this out? It’s a wonderful tale. After finishing up my laundry and neatly folding my clothes into drawers, then showering, I resumed to get dressed in my PJ’s (Advanced Chemistry tye-dye tee-shirt, jacket, and long black cotton sleep pants bedazzled with cute hearts) and trod down to hall like every other night in my flip flops.

This was an ordinary night until I turned the corner to enter Hall.

Do you know the classic nightmare where somehow you are standing in front of loads of people who are laughing at you because you somehow managed to come to school dressed in your underwear?

Well I turned the corner and to see–not the lovely faces of Rupurt and the other Oxbridge staff–but table after table of people dressed in their finest attire, some in academic gowns, jammed together enjoying dinner.

I froze and stared; my mind had gone completely blank. People were starting to go quiet, turning and looking at this strange child with her tee-shirt, her pajama bottoms, and her rainbow headband. I was framed by the impressive, gargantuan doors with wet hair, looking completely wide-eyed.

I think I managed to take control of my senses and uproot myself before too many people had noticed, but I definitely left a storm of whispers in my wake. As no one knew my name, methinks I am safe. ^_^

Today was graduation day for Oxford University.

So this morning I entered the poetry unit, which I am starting to dread slightly less. Julie, my new teacher, is very nice and lovely and also very talkative, so there are no awkward moments. She is also very instructive, as a poetry teacher should be, pointing out cliches wherever they arise regardless of whose work it is and commenting on a variety of other things.

We wrote words on the board– sadness, comfort, desperation, etc– and went around the class suggesting images that, for us, conjured the emotion. This was a fairly standard exercise because even in prose authors constantly have to find new ways of using imagry to avoid the fatal practice of telling and not showing. [Mind you, I have never tried/written a satisfactory poem in my life (and if poetry is similar to prose, this will definitely mean I am rubbish but either way I am plunging in enthusiastically), and being able to think of relevant images is far from writing finished poetry.]

So let me give you an example of what is cliche by providing you with an example (from my bff Drama Girl). If someone asks you for an image that conjures sadness for you, do not say “a photograph” because 1) it’s cliche as all spuck and 2) this photograph is entirely non-specific. It could be of unicorns or a traffic cone as much as it could be the image of a long lost lover.

Another thing not to say is (Writer Girl’s suggestion) a sad song that makes you relive a lost relationship for whatever reason because that, my friend, is not an image at all. Maybe a gramaphone wouldn’t be horribly cliche, or a broken cd player, but don’t say “a song.” Don’t.

Only recently (within the last eight months) did I begin to write prose fluidly, and only in the last three or four have I begun to consider myself as a legitimate author. I wish I had started sooner, and  I am starting to have the same feeling towards poetry except I haven’t even begun. What I have always had is a respect for a medium I have never embraced. Hint: Don’t walk into a poetry class and say “I hate poetry,” as a girl in my class did. You might as well have “I don’t read” written across your forehead because saying “I hate poetry” is an equivalent of saying something like  ”I hate prose” which is way, way too non-specific.

But for some reason when the word is “poetry” and not “prose,” most people think it’s okay.

It’s not.

Today we also listened to some slam poetry, which I wish I could perform more than I wish I could play the gutair. Slam poetry is poetry with a beat, and it’s addicting and raw and beautiful. We watched about twenty minutes of Def Poetry, a series produced by HBO that ran for six seasons. And once I get back to the States, I am ordering it off Amazon and never looking back.

Google it and take a listen. You won’t regret it. You won’t be able to stop watching.

After my major I signed up to see an orchestra performace in the Hollywell Music Rooms Sunday at 11:15 (and I signed up Sarah too). Fun fact: Hollywell is the oldest concert hall in Oxford, which probably means its one of the oldest (if not the oldest) in England. Also I signed us  up for Romeo & Juliet for Wednesday @ 6:45. Lots to look forward to.

Today was our cruise down the Iris, a river smaller than the Char that runs across the Christ Church meadows. It wasn’t the river we went punting on, which was the Char, but it was amazing! I loved it because we got to go through several locks– lots of fun. :) I will post loads of pictures and a video tomorrow, methinks.

The rest of the day was tame until about fifteen minutes ago when I completely humiliated myself in front of well-dressed strangers. ^_^ Sarah and I did our laundry in the basement in WONDERFUL *grins* industrial sized Whirlpool washers and dryers we didn’t have to pay for. SCORE. They’re in the basement of our staircase, and we didn’t have to wait in line, etc. [Fun fact- a girl in Sarah's major sent out for dry cleaning because she doesn't know how to wash her own clothes and doesn't care to figure it out. *rolls eyes* Three quid per shirt, for starters. At least thirty shirts, apparently. You do the math and figure out how much you could save if you have a few gerbils in the brain, enough gerbils to know to go to Sains and buy detergent, buckets of color catchers, and lots of fabric softener].

There’s also a TV room next to the laundry room that’s huge and full of armchairs. I was shown it when we watched Gattaca in Bioethics there… but no one besides me and about twelve other teens who live in Pembrooke know about it (oh! and now Sarah, of course). And they’re not talking. So it was a peaceful space to read in and sort laundry today. ^_^

Sarah ran and grabbed a pizza from town because we missed dinner, doing our laundry in all. It was a wonderful piece of Americana. :)

And the rest is history. I’ve gotten several emails that I am trying to respond to, but you might have to wait a day as I’m exhausted. But pleace keep sending them! I appreciate it more than I can tell you.

Cheers!

Laura