The not-end

Once again I've passed though the two weeks of the year that are completely confusing.  It's a mad rush to the end, and then suddenly the pace of life changes.  This time last year, the strangeness was compounded by my trying to process the end-of-captaining confusion.  This year, it was strange because it's the last time I'll do a lot of this stuff -- at least as a real student -- but it's not really a farewell because I'll be staying in Cambridge for the summer and autumn.  As such, I'm feeling at once sentimental and still-entrenched.  Probably the biggest representation of this duality is the fact that come August I will move out of my room of four years and into a room in a house right by the river.  I was very lucky to find a place with an amazing location and a wonderful landlady/housemate (touch wood!).  So, I'm excited.  But there's a strong pang of regret to leave my home-away-from-home.

Where's the rest of Kemble?

There has been plenty of fun, to be sure: Boat Club Dinner, the Trinity Hall June Event, garden parties, cricket, and silly rowing under golden sunsets (between thunderstorms).  And remember my favorite Victorian, John Mitchell Kemble?  I encountered him unexpectedly in London, where I'd gone to see an exhibit on Vikings at the British Museum.  Walking through the theatre district, I suddenly spotted an old pub called Kemble's Head, undoubtedly in honor of JMK's father, a famous Shakespearean actor.  The place is now a Greek restaurant, and the food is quite tasty.  (You know I had to go in, right?)

Now summer days stretch out before me, and I have miles of dissertation to go before I sleep.  I'm now very, very familiar with my topic, and I must disappointedly admit that a lot of what I'm saying is ripped from a handful of book chapters and articles I read in my first year.  I've synthesized them to form my own product, and I've definitely added new material.  However, the ideas that I find exciting and interesting about my project have been said more than once -- in fact, I dare to say that they're generally acknowledged already.  I'm saying them in more detail, which I guess is nice.  Well, at least I like where it's all going, it's just annoying how most things have already been said!  Time to work on someone less famous?  But first, we finish.

Good things

In the spirit of feeling incredibly cheerful lately, I'm giving you a quick survey of some Good Things from the term so far.

Choir stalls at Peterborough Cathedral

Right at the beginning of term, the Trinity Hall Chapel Choir sang evensong at Peterborough Cathedral.  This big, beautiful, historic place -- oh hello, Katharine of Aragon's tomb -- was a far cry from our usual digs.  We put in a lot of rehearsal time to blend our voices into the kind of sound that should hang in the air between 800-year-old arches.  The results were good.  And being early evening on a Wednesday, there were maybe 8 people there to appreciate it.  Oh, well.  In Tit Hall, that would have seemed a healthy crowd.

Bursts of summer weather.  A few weekends ago, it was absolutely gorgeous!  While our rowing outings were sadly cancelled due to races on the river, I took the free time to walk to Fen Ditton, an unbelievable picturesque little village just down the river.  My destination was The Plough, a pub with a beer garden right on the river.  I row past it all the time, and that day I could sit and observe the various crews racing past while trying to mitigate my ridiculous sock tan.  The following day, the MCR had a barbecue.  Since then, the weather has only gotten better, and today I could easily imagine that I'm back home.

A field outside St Ives (Cambridgeshire)

Taking advantage of the warmth, a friend and I asked George, my favorite porter, where we could go on a day trip.  He recommended St Ives -- not the famous one in Cornwall, the village in Cambridgeshire.  We reached said spot after a half-hour ride on the guided busway -- a bizarre transformation of an old rail line into a dedicated bus path, distinctly lacking in charm or much of a view.  We saw one of the few statues of Cromwell that are around (he was local to the area), though it dated from the early 20th century.  We also poked inside an unusual chapel built mid-bridge over the river Ouse (pronounced "ooze").  But as usual with these kinds of things, the best part was unplanned; having spied people walking across a neighboring field during lunch, we decided to have a wander and ended up sitting by the river listening to the birds go crazy in the humid air.  Sigh.

Meanwhile, W1 has gelled nicely in terms of rowing together.  There are still enough adverse circumstances that I don't think we'll do well in bumps (sigh), but the outings are a real pleasure, in terms of both the sunshine and the feel of the boat.  And when I manage to make it to cricket practice, my atrocious bowling has become mostly passable now!  We just got our new kit, adding yet more sporty clothes to my swelling collection.

Here's hoping the upward trend continues for another week and a half, so I can get my final chapter in shape by the deadline I gave my supervisor.  He said in so many words that I can't miss any more of them, and it should be possible.  Fingers crossed that it will be another Good Thing for this magical month.

Precise words

I started mulling over the theme of this post during the NVSA conference a few weeks ago.  As with most conferences, the presenters had approached the theme ("Victorian Senses") from an impressive diversity of directions.  Sometimes, to be honest, their highly articulate vocabulary had the effect of making me feel thick-headed.  If you don't regularly work on phenomenology and can barely even remember what the term means, if the word haptic is new to you, if you have difficulty absorbing by ear a densely theoretical essay about a work of literature you've never read -- well, there were moments of NVSA when the universe gave you an opportunity to make peace with your littleness.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure much of the material I couldn't soak up was brilliant.  But if nothing else, it demonstrated the sheer number of words in academese which I simply don't have in the rotating drum of my word-hoard.  (Incidentally, word-hoard is a term I lifted from Beowulf to become the theme of one of my chapters.)

At the same time, I found myself jotting down words that might be useful someday: perhaps something is germane to my argument; perhaps I could call Tennyson's group of college friends a coterie; and I really should look up what it means to deracinate something.  [It means 'to pluck or tear up by the roots, to eradicate, exterminate'.  Just try to imagine the daleks crying, 'Deracinate!  Deracinate!']  It's just so satisfying to fit exactly the right word to something.  Like the old skill of building dry-stone walls, you find the contours that fit snugly together, and temporarily collapse the gap between thought and speech.  I think it's part of what people love about Shakespeare: he can describe common emotions with such eloquence.

Then there's the fun of happening upon something in my research reading that corresponds eerily well with what's going on in my life at that moment.  The day after I'd sent a very incomplete chapter to my supervisor, I read a letter from Tennyson saying that he had given up his latest book draft to the editor with many remaining flaws and he was very annoyed about it.  The last day of April featured a glorious spring afternoon in Cambridge, during which I was reading some of In Memoriam and found the lines,

          Can trouble live in April days,
          Or sadness in the summer moons?

Fortunately, the answer seems to be "no".  Work must proceed, preferably faster than it has been, but spring is banishing sadness and trouble -- at least for those who don't have exams.  The iridescent leaves, the trilling birds, and the strolling Sweaver thrill to the returning scent of life in the air.  If only I could think of better words to fit the shape of what I mean by that.

Happy Easter, everyone

After a week of wonderfully sunny, warmish weather, England remembered that it was England, and the rain rolled in for Easter Sunday.  I sampled what an Easter eucharist is like in King's College chapel, returning home for the remains of an MCR brunch and then a quiet afternoon and evening enjoying the cozy gray day.  Here's what it sounded like outside my window:

A short spring run-around

Have you ever had someone casually ask you a question that pulled you up short and made you think?  Well, about a month ago, someone asked me what I will take away when I leave Cambridge, and I was so spoiled for choice that I had to think carefully about how to answer succinctly.  I reviewed the last 3.5 years: moving abroad, learning to row, the captaining year, being on the MCR committee, becoming a college personality known as "Sweaver", discovering what I'm like when I drink, presenting at conferences in front of eminent people, spending candle-lit evenings with a small but talented chapel choir, making friends with the porters, consuming far too much tea, becoming addicted to the lunchtime crossword, and talking about Tennyson to anyone who will sit still long enough.  If I had to summarize it, I'd say I've learned just how much I can do and thus gained the confidence to plunge into new endeavors knowing that my initial ignorance won't stop me succeeding.

My most recent endeavor was to show my buddy Martin the wonders of northern California.  Consequently, I spent the first week of spring break re-acquainting myself with the beauties of my state, in between rain showers that seemed determined to belie our reputation for golden weather.  It was a tiring week, to be sure, but I certainly enjoyed putting my own stamp on things.  A tour book could direct you to the Golden Gate Bridge (check) or Yosemite (check), but it won't take you past La Maison Française at Stanford, insist that you ride the Giant Dipper in Santa Cruz no matter the weather, or suggest you stop for pie at Duarte's Tavern in Pescadero after pausing at the iconic Pigeon Point Lighthouse.  And let's not forget the hospitality at the childhood home of one Sarah A. Weaver, future PhD (cantab).

Only a few days after that adventure calmed down, I was off to Disney World "on the way" to the conference of the Northeast Victorian Studies Association in Stony Brook, NY.  I told you about proposing the topic in an old post, and the time had finally come to deliver it.  The conference paper was a major source of stress right up until I gave it on the last morning.  It was highly fragmentary only nine hours before my panel, and goodness knows how I managed to rearrange and glue it together in time, along with accompanying slideshow.  The rush made me very nervous, but it was very well received, and because I performed a few tongue twister examples -- without flubbing them -- I got a round of applause in the middle of the paper!  That was amazing!  Something to think of when I need a boost in future.

Emotional waves

Well, bumps went slightly better than expected.  We got bumped quickly the first two days, had a very good rowover on the third, and a heartbreaking near-rowover on the last day (see picture), in which we got caught literally 20 strokes from the finish line.  Until then, I'd never cried after a bumps race, but that commitment deserved a better result.  Still, very proud of the new girls for their fighting spirit and the fact that they are determined to come back with a vengeance next term!

The week was capped by Boat Club Dinner, of course, a truly festive event in Trinity Hall's newly-renovated hall.  It looks superb now, and we had plenty of "heavies" (alumni) back to appreciate it.  I had lots of fun catching up with people, hugging, dancing, taking pictures, hugging some more...  And then it was time to go home.  And something happened that has started happening with unnerving regularity this year: I got disproportionately sad on the walk home.  Partly it was because everyone had scattered and I was left alone -- a sharp contrast to the sociality of the night.  By the time I got to my room, it was partly because my leather shoes had made my toes very sore.  But really, I was way too upset for such trivial things to have been more than a mild inconvenience.  Why was I suddenly so distraught?

My friend Martin shrewdly answered that question the next day: it's because I'm sad that the whole Cambridge thing is ending soon -- so each miniature ending magnifies emotions that are already running close to the surface.  I hope I don't finish off every party night in tears or spend the whole next day feeling melancholy, but staring down the straightaway toward completion stirs up the froth in one's psyche.  Fortunately, in this case, even the sad mini-ending took a happy turn.  I managed to catch up to a friend who'd left for home before me, and with hugs administered, my worldview became rosier again.

Rowing, again

It's that time of year again.  If you're Facebook friends with me, you'll have noticed that my cover photo has changed to the now-traditional THBC crest, as seen here in all its glory.  This can only mean that Lent Bumps is around the corner.

I've had an odd relationship with rowing this year.  In my first year, I was trying to learn and improve.  My second year, I was striving to become as good as most of the W1 rowers who remained, so I pushed myself really hard.  Last year, I poured a great deal of energy into trying to bring up my boat's power and skill from the disadvantage of having promoted four novices (out of eight total crew members).  This year, well...  I'm the lone old hand amongst a whole women's club that otherwise consists of first- and second-year undergrads.  The girls in W1 are lovely, and they're slowly realizing that I'm not an alien creature and that they can talk to me.  But for the first time, my purpose in rowing is a vaguely social experience and bit of exercise.  I'm not pushing myself as hard as I used to, and we have no chance of winning anything right now.  It's disappointing to a certain extent, but what with trying to finish the PhD and such, there's also a certain relief to having the pressure off.

Meanwhile, the weather has undeniably been creeping toward the springlike, with more sunny days and a definite moisture in the air, encouraging the earliest flowers to appear along the backs.  It makes it much easier to face each day of tinkering.  Also helpful are:

• having a good fourth-year review, confirming that my project as currently organized makes sense and will be a dissertation
• going shopping for a new dress and finding the perfect item
• a bunch of friends from my first year gathering for a reunion/birthday party just like old times

And so I enter a hectic week that begins the run-up to the end of term and what will be a truly manic spring break.  Would we have it any other way?