Hot Damn!

Just walked in the door from my first debate at the Oxford Union Society--kicking off the heels and pin-stripe suit I was wearing.  The intellects of all two hundred in the room were lit up as we hung on each word--the proponents brilliant and the opponents geniusly ripping as they hashed out whether or not the British Empire was "a good thing."  My favorite intro line from a floor speaker (anyone is allowed to stand up and insert a comment/heckle/affront during the debate) was "Well, as Henry the VIII said to his wives, 'I won't keep you long'..."  Though the subject was beautifully dense, the humor was liberally applied throughout, including one historian/Oxford don attempting to gain our support of the British Empire's good because it has spread Cricket throughout the world.

The crux:  Do we praise Empire (not just British, but any) for the positives they offered the world's stage--education (Univ. of Oxford), democracy, societal structure, exposure to Western phil/literature/music/art, an international language, promotion of human rights--or do we denounce them for the horrors they've set up that are still playing out--complete squashing of human rights, slavery, postcolonialistic effects, demise of indigenous peoples, environmental destruction, etc.--or do we remove good and bad from the argument altogether, and see it for the complexly historical fact that Empire just was & hasn't to do with morals, never did, never will, but has to do with exploitation/gain--or do we write it off as non-judgeable because a twenty-first century mind shouldn't put the nineteenth century on trial for being nineteenth century?  After two hours of heckling, laughing, hushed hanging, clapping, smiling the debate ended and we all filed out one of two doors, voting on whether we sided with the proponents or the opponents.  Above one door it says 'Noes' and above the other it says "Ays."  And which I walked out of is for you to ascertain/guess & post, for my amusement, if you will.  & tell me for fun, though you couldn't possibly know, I assure you, since you weren't there to hear, which you'd walk out of.  It was a surprisingly waffling experience, so good were the debaters.

And home now, heels kicked off, I'm still smiling from the debate & thinking "Hot damn, I love this town!"  Still, after six weeks, can't believe how brilliant it actually is here.  I'll lie prostrate at Carfax (where High Street, St. Aldates, Queen Street, and Cornmarket street cross at the centre) and weep if the graduate committee doesn't say "Ay."  But, I counsel myself, that I'll be forever thankful for three months of what to me is what I'd need a good portion of heaven to be to want to go there.  Not sure if that reassurance will work so well, however, when the three month timer goes 'ding.'

Also, visited The Dragon School this am--Oxford's prep school--& where I'd like Naya to go next fall--the art wing is a place she would flourish as she deserves to.  & read Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel at the Bod this afternoon--which assured me of my stance on the erasure of the binary way of devising/dividing the world/humanity/ourselves.  & went to a film (American) called 'Precious' late afternoon that made me feel embarrassed for demanding the world be more like Oxford when there are so many someones that have no need for a place like Oxford with doors for voting and heels to walk through them and taxis to ride home in and blogs to detail a world so agonizingly separate from theirs.  & now I must finish the rough draft of my short story on the servant girl at Christ Church to submit to my writing group before I sleep.

Love, love, love when life is this stackedly full of exploring what it is to be a human.