Two homes

Jerwood reading room, Tit Hall

Bender Room, Stanford

This is my fourth year as a PhD student at Cambridge.  I feel very much at home in the UK now, and you might think that fact would make me feel that I'd outgrown my familiar places in California.  However, I seem to have divided my homely feelings equally.  This is very confusing.  The whole idea of "you can't go home again" is utter nonsense.  But you can expand the places you count as home.

I admit that I haven't gotten out of Cambridge much, but I love living in England.  I'll stay if they'll let me, though immigration crackdowns aren't making that a likely scenario.  A fellow American asked me recently what I like so much about England, and I found it difficult to articulate.  I'll try anyway, though.

Tea.   The English have a core belief in the power of tea to mend all wounds.  And here's the funny thing -- it does.  It perks you up mid-afternoon, clears a stuffy nose, and settles a queasy stomach.  It's also a ritual of friendliness, compassion, and stability.  So ingrained is it that when "Lawrence of Arabia" airs on TV over the holidays, there's a spike in electricity use during the scene when Omar Sharif appears on the horizon and rides slowly toward the camera.  Why?  Because everyone in the country boils the kettle during that scene!  Hilarious.

Pubs.  An Old English teacher of mine once posited that the pub is the descendent of the Anglo-Saxon mead hall, and I think he was on to something.  Bars don't do much for me -- too artificial and (usually) expensive.  But a pub is all about talking and good company.  AND they have...

Cider.  I've never cared for beer.  Oddly, given that I like my tea black, I find beer too bitter for me. But at a British establishment, there will always be cider.  And it's far better than anything from a bottle back home.  Scrumpy cider has an intensely apple-y taste and is less fizzy, but beware -- it packs a punch.

Choral tradition.  Enough said.

A tendency to be reasonable.  The number of times in a day that I hear the phrase "to be fair" is remarkable.  America, for better or worse, was largely founded by religious radicals, and our sense of fairness is to let everyone live their crazy to the full.  The English as an averaged whole seem more interested in living and letting live.
(Oddly, our governmental styles are flipped: parliament makes a show of insulting the prime minister during question time, loudly cheering, etc., whereas congress(wo)men always pretend they're perfectly calm and reasonable.)

Perhaps most importantly, and most simply:

It's different.  I don't mean that home was so bad that I had to escape!  I love being from California.  But living somewhere that's different enough to keep you on your toes -- like the constant, small translations calculating in my head -- makes you more aware of yourself and the life you're living.

Happy New Year

You may recall from last year that I don't especially care for making New Year's resolutions.  I certainly didn't get my dissertation submitted in 2013, which was one of the few goals I set for that calendar year.  However, any chance to pause and reflect is a good thing in this frenzied world.  And I had a hell of a year to reflect on.

The first half of 2013 was crammed with crises, crying, and hard-won minor captaining victories.  But somewhere along the way I also discovered that I'd found a true friend in my buddy Martin, and having that kind of support on that side of the ocean has been an unexpected blessing.  Then there was a quiet summer, choir tour, a September of late nights in the library, a fall term of feeling that I was spinning my academic wheels, and finally the breakthrough of a good meeting with my supervisor.  I capped off 2013 the way I rang it in: dancing down Colorado Boulevard in the Rose Parade with the Stanford band, and cheering on the team at the subsequent game.  Sadly, this one reminded me far too much of the way the team used to play when I was an undergraduate.

I'm back in Cambridge now, after one of those long day-night-day travel slogs that make time seem a confused fantasy.  I'm told the UK has been experiencing massive storms while I was away, but tonight the air is calm and damp, the city quiet and expectant.  Here's to another new start.