The Oxford Narrative (or, What the World Looks Like If You Spend Your Days at the Bodleian and Your Nights at the Oxford Union For 9 Weeks Without Reprieve)

the laces are only tightened so severely in Oxford, criss crossing up the back, along the neural pathways, in the approach to essay writing or text interpretation or debate tactics or attire so that they can be released more completely with one sharp slice, directing one’s mind (with the swiftness of  aufspritzen/ejaculation/a rocket) down neural corridors that it hadn’t seen before, that hadn’t been there before.  the Oxbridge sex blog, underwear at busstops, "the pull," macabre bicycle seats like limbs and body parts in the bushes, oscar wilde’s sweeping of velvet in the wind that blows down cobblestoned alleys, dorian grey in every lowered lash, in between the lines of every theatre production, the physics student with a quill and red ink spilled at the bodleian, and the distraction of undone collars.  

one is released from everything at oxford.  one doesn’t have to smile.  one can forego pats on the back for nicking the knife edge to the laces of one’s comrades.  one is released from the everyday niceties in favor of argument, even the niceties of everyday banter for ripping debate that takes on the form of being brought to one’s knees by a wave of the hand and a bold, ‘no thank you.’  one is released from the nervous, isolation-oriented, how are you, i'm fine, so busy, so great, neuroses of the modern gaze, to find eyes to be direct and smolderingly-confrontational, everyone smoldering, or with bothered indifference that your smoldering or your misunderstanding is like a fly in their butter, or a twist in their lace, but still they look on with intrigue.  one can be, think, act in any way at all, so long as it is truly leading to the epitome of the unrestrained, in the way that one knows restraint, precision, resolve, determination, discipline, utter withholding of basic needs like sleep, and then at some exact moment opts to cut the corset up the back, and revel in the unrestrained one can only feel in oxford. 

some say oxford lives in a bubble, that it hasn’t come into the 21^st century from the 16^th, but it seems those people haven’t walked its corridors, stood in its debate rotunda, read its house-bound books, walked its spiral staircases, eavesdropped on its conversations, slunk along its puke-ridden alleys in heels, haven’t tightened the laces and sharpened the blade, or they would know that the bubble oxford dwells in is something not archaic/outdated but is a humanity that has followed a different branch from what one thinks of as our current collective state.  encompassing all that humanity has ever been, holding it in the palm, aware intoxicatingly, precisely, unrestrainedly of what it is the palm holds, that it is crushable, that it is delicate, that it is kissable, that it is meaningless, that it is indestructible, that everything depends upon it, and then lifting it to warm, swollen lips to press against it so that the breath pushes out of it in agony, only to take a gasp of deepest inhale after in sweet repose. 

oxford is raw genius and human wildness smoldering as it laces and unlaces, and frightens the rest of humanity that might stop in for the weekend if they look closely enough to see they are finding a version of humanity that subscribes to a different narrative than one can find elsewhere, as if it is some non-mythical, rawer avalon, athens, atlantis, the stuff of literature, arias, paintings resides here still, the renaissance yet to die off beneath the cement, plastic, wifi, facebook one-liners we've been asked to contend with elsewhere. it is frightening enough to call the lacing and unlacing one will find here a bubble. it is intoxicating enough to cling to it and weep for having to walk out its gates.  or it can also just look nice in a photograph, ‘I went to oxford, here I am standing beside an ancient college where the smartest of the smart have studied for centuries in the smartest of smart attire.’  if only the lacing could be conveyed in such pictures, and the smoldering, and the sound of laces being cut with one deft maneuver, as neural pathways aren’t all that’s released, in every room, under every archway, at every busstop, along every press of lips, and in every gaze that undoes the thought that it takes a 4.0 to get in here and money.  it takes a willingness to hold one’s breath, to put a foot on the dresser to pull more tightly against that which wants to be lax, and to stow a sharpened blade along your inner thigh. that’s what it takes to get into oxford.  and by get into, i mean understand.

and of course there is the afternoon tea and scones if that is simply too much on occasion, or altogether.

(and this is just a post about a particularly prevalent thread woven through a town that has many other threads, i've not lost touch entirely, nor have i become a dorian grey, nor a reveler in surety, don't worry)