Reading in the Country

Yesterday, feeling a little claustrophobic, I had to get away from the flats and I walked about six miles out into the country to do some reading. I happened upon the abandoned ruins of some old building, maybe a church. I need to do some research to see if I can't figure out what it was. There was nobody but the cows around for miles and I did my reading there until the sound of the wind against the old walls got too spooky

I have to be very careful about the English landscape; it's beautiful in the most melancholy kind of way, making it all to easy for me to indulge in being a sad bastard. I don't want to come home more morbid than when I left.

Reading All Day, All Week

Sorry I've not been posting more regularly. I've been kind of sequestered inside all week while I do my reading, so I don't have much of interest to fill people in on. By way of making an excuse for being bad at keeping up the blog, here's a list of the reading I've been doing for the past six days.

The Metaphysics - Aristotle

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences - Foucault

The Dialectic of Enlightenment - Adorno and Horkheimer

The Essence of Christianity - Feurbach

The German Ideology - Marx

The Pentateuch - God (I guess?)


...So that's my excuse.

We've been having reading parties that, after about eight hours of reading and the inevitable introduction of cheap English beer, tend to devolve into just parties. That's about all I have pictures of.


That's me, Lance, Raya, and Shawna.
That's Alex.

Here are some older pictures just so nobody thinks we just booze and read all day.

French Market

Oxford seems to organize some kind of market or bazaar in Gloucester Green every week. The week before last it was a farmer's market, this past weekend the French got a turn. I had a lot of reading to do and then went to London so couldn't get around to putting up a post; here it is now. Mostly, it was all French sweets and pastries, not that I'm complaining. I got to use my French with some real, live French people for the first time and I bought what turned out to be some really terrible wine. Here are some pictures.Je veux manger beaucoup de bonbon!

And while I'm putting up pictures I've neglected, here are some more for you, Dad.

The British Film Institute (Disclaimer: This Post Gets Kinda Pretentious Here and There.)

All of Oxford's crooked lanes and meandering alleyways have started to settle into a comfortable familiarity in my brain and I am finding it harder and harder to get lost in town. So I decided it was time to venture out and do some exploring. I took a bus into London with a plan to wander around parts of the city I had missed when I was there a few years ago. One thing I neglected during that last trip and which has been nagging me ever since, was my desire to visit the British Film Institute. So I indulged my self.

The BFI is in central London on the South bank of the Thames. Somehow in the intervening space between Oxford and London, the muddy, aggrandized stream that flows behind my flat...

turns into this crowded, tidal water way.


The Film Institute itself is shares space with the National Theater and some other museums in an imposing, angular complex of concrete.

I don't know how I feel about the architecture.


Inside the BFI, the first stop I made was to the gallery where there is currently a Pierre Bismuth and Michel Gondry installation called 'The All-Seeing Eye (The Hardcore Techno Version).' It is essentially a dark room with slept-upon pillows piled about the center. A projector, slowly rotating 360 degrees, projects a film of a furniture filled room on the sections of the gallery's blank wall, creating a kind of partial phantom room in the gallery.

At times, a person feels like they can walk right into it. As the projector continually repeats the circuit, the contents of the filmed room almost imperceptibly begin to disappear. Eventually when the filmed room is totally vanished, the projector's function itself transformed from chimerical to luminous, no longer filling the room with images but illuminating its emptiness. I laid on the pillows for the ten minutes or so that it took for the piece to run its course. It was magical. I know this will be the second time that Marcel Proust has been mentioned in this blog--which is pretty embarrassing-- but I wonder if Bismuth and Gondry weren't inspired by the narrator of 'Swann's Way' and his recollection of the walls and furnishings in his bedroom swirling around him in the moments between sleep and wakefulness. I might just think that because I always thought that the way Gondry discomposed the places and objects in his characters' environments according to their changing memory in 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' was very Proustian. I smell a paper! And who knows, maybe if I keep rereading 'Swann's Way' I can eventually stop feeling guilty for never finishing 'In Search of Lost Time." Here's the link, you shouldn't have to read too far. Also, I'm trying to upload the video I took of the installation but it's a big file and my internet connection is lousy here. For the nonce, here is a link to the complete version of the film from Youtube. You'll have to imagine the gallery it is projected in.

After the gallery I wanted to see a movie,which was great because since I've been living with so many people I have had too few opportunities to really indulge in some good, old-fashioned solitary anti-social behavior. Even better, they were playing 'Don't Look Now,' which is my favorite Nicholas Roeg movie and tied for #1 with Polanski's 'The Tenant' on my 'Unduly Neglected Horror Movies' list. The print was a little crap, but for a ghost story about ineluctable decay and death amid the canals of Venice it kinda worked in the movie's favor.

Both 'Don't Look Now' and 'The All-Seeing Eye' were at the BFI as a part of their "Time Machine" program, a retrospective looking at the Cinema as a "time obsessed" medium. I think both were great choice, especially for thinking about time as it relates to memory and place. Here's a link to the BFI's synopsis of the program. I salivate when I look at it.

I also stopped into their bookstore, which by the way, has just about every book on film theory that I have spent long hours pining for on Amazon, so I spent a good deal of time there laying hands on all the treasures. Too bad these books are expensive in the States to begin with, making them doubly so here. I did get some stuff and spent a little too much money, but what the hell. One book, Barthes's 'Camera Lucida' is something I need for school next term anyway. The other, 'Lacan Reframed,' claims to go back to "go back to the basics" of Lacanian thought to explain why it is essential to film theory. Surprise, surprise, it's a very slim volume. I thought I'd give him one last shot before definitively answering my long standing question: "Is it just me, or does this crap not really mean anything?" The neatest part about the bookstore was their filpbook section. They have taken a bunch of short films (or snippets thereof) and turned them into little pocket-sized treats. I bought three. How could I not? Any body who could watch these dead images sputter to life and not feel a sparkle of wonder is dead inside. The smallest filpbook I got is called "Taking off a Hat," one of Muybridge's human locomotion studies, another is from the very first animated film "Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed," and the last is the filpbook version of my all-time favorite educational film "The Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero." That's pretty self-evident right? Basically, its the biggest zoom shot in history, moving from beyond the outer limits of the galaxy to within a single proton of a carbon atom in the hand of a man having a nap on a lawn next to Lake Shore Drive. Here's a video of one of the books:



In addition to making me homesick for Chicago, the powers of ten book fortuitously reminded me of something I read in a Shimer course two years ago that I think I could use as a text in the History of Vision tutorial I'm trying to get off the ground. In Lucretius's poem "On the Nature of the Universe" not only his he among the first to suggest the atomistic view of the world we get in "Powers of Ten," but if I understand him correctly I think he also describes (perhaps for the first time) the very process by which a filpbook or movie work. In book IV he writes

"It haps an image this is seen to do;
In sooth, when perishes the former image,
And other is gendered of another pose,
That former seemeth to have changed its gestures. "

Persistence of Vision! And it only took about 2000 years from the time Lucretius figured this out until the time Muybridge could use it to reanimate images of a running horse (or a man with a hat, in the case of my new toy.)

I had conceived of my trip to London as one which would included the BFI as but one stop among many others-- then I found their Mediatheque. They have done a really superb job of digitizing a huge part of their film archives and making them avail able to the public. I went in, cozied up to a nice viewing station and spent the next four hours (and the rest of the evening) reveling in their collection. I almost panic in situations like these, where there is so much to see I almost hurts to watch anything, knowing that watching X inevitably means not watching Y. Still, I managed to gorge my eyes on quite a bit. I watched a lot of early silent entomological films. Here's one of my favorite. I also watched a lot of cool psychedelia from the 60's

and a bunch of Edwardian street scenes from the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection.
I think my favorite viewing, however, was an early Technicolor promotional piece for a British Paint manufacture called Halcyon Paint. I love how super saturated and vivid all the colors achieved from that process are and seeing all the ribbons of flowing liquid paint in Halcyon's factory was like stuffing a candy store into my eyeballs. I can't find it on Youtube,
you'll just have to come to London.

Oxford Farmer's Market

On my way to class today I passed by Gloucester Green, a little tree-lined square on the western edge of central Oxford, and the weekly farmer's market was underway. Since I finally got a bike and can get places more quickly, I had time to stop. I got some strawberries and some really creamy goat cheese. Next week I'm going to go prepared with cash, because it looks like the place to go for produce that's cheaper and higher quality than the stuff at the stores. It's taken me a little while to get used to how small all the fruit and vegetables and the grocery stores here tends to be. I guess it's because Europeans aren't as cavalier as Americans are about genetically modified foods and pesticides and fertilizers and all that. I'd like to say that their produce tastes a lot better as a result of their prudence, but I think, generally, the grocery store-bought stuff here is about on par with what I'm used to back home. The food at the market however looked great and I guess there is something to be said for getting to feel all quaint and old-worldy when you buy your strawberries.

Here are some pictures. Be sure to look at the crazy purple cauliflower.


Speaking of fresh food. it's not just at the farmers market. There's a huge apple tree and tons of blackberry bushes growing wild on our street. A few days ago we picked a bunch of them thinking it would be a frugal way to get our fruit.

I used a bunch of the apples and berries to make a really great crisp. My roommates have all made me self conscious about taking pictures of my food so I don't have any thing to show you, but if you want to make one (and you should) here's a link. If you do make it, I'd recommend doubling the topping and going easy on the zest, unless you want it really lemony.

I need to go now. I want to get alot of reading done tonight so I can do some biking or maybe go to London this weekend.

I got a bike!

Used for a pretty reasonable price. It says the "The Falcon" on it and came with lights and a bell. All it needs now are some streamers and playing cards in the spokes. I know you're all jealous. I took it for a quick ride in the country today and I think I might ride it out two Blenheim Palace on Friday. I got a helmet too and I'm getting pretty good at the whole driving on the left thing, so don't worry.

That's the Falcon and another hot air balloon, which by the way, I'm totally blasé about now. "How blasé?" you ask. Well, if you were to imagine my train of thought upon seeing this hot air balloon as taking the form of a dialog between two country gentlemen out for an evening constitutional on the moor, it might go a little something like this...

"Lord Bullingdon: [looks up, places his thumbs firmly behind the lapels of his tweed jacket] I say old man, looks to be another of those ghastly dirigibles, what, what.

Duke Hufflepuff: [absentmindedly removes pipe from his mouth] Quite..."

Not that I walk around constructing comically offensive stereotypes of the English all day. That wouldn't be very blasé, which is what I am now. Blasé.

Things are starting up

Sorry I haven't posted much in the past few days; my academic season is starting to take shape and it's going to take up a significant chunk of my time. Today was the first meeting of my Shimer core course, Humanities 3 (The Philosophy of Theology, to the uninitiated). Stuart, the itinerant Shimer professor in Oxford with us this year,, is facilitating the course and he decided to meet in the Red Lion, a pub near central Oxford, so it was cider and Socratic dialogs for me this afternoon. Nice.

I'm also doing quite a bit of preparatory reading work for one of my Oxford tutorials on Continental Philosophy and Critical Theory. My tutor is at Balliol College and I think he and I should be getting together at the start of next month, which is the beginning of Oxford's academic year. Starting a class in October feels crazy, but unlike American universities, Oxford uses a rather archaic academic calender. The year is divided into three eight week terms-- Michaelmas Term, Hillary Term, and Trinity Term--with 'vacations' in between. And as relaxing as the vacations may sound, one is expected to do all the preparation and reading for the next term over them.

Stuart and I are still working to find a tutor for my other "Archaeology of Vision" tutorial. The don we had lined up ended up getting a post at another University just before I came over. He (Stuart) and I spent some time today getting to know the folks at Oxford's Visual Studies Department and seeing whose research interests meshed well with my own. I met a couple of professors there who are doing some really exciting work and who seemed genuinely interested in working with me.

As far as my French tutorial is going, I'm translating my way through Georges Bataille's "Histoire de l'oeil." It's turning out to be really ridiculously smutty. Those French.

Anyway, I know I've been posting pictures of what I've been doing, so not to disappoint...
Ok, it's still disappointing.

D.F.W.

Too bad about David Foster Wallace. I spent a good six months with 'Infinite Jest' two years ago... It was good to know there were writers like him out there. So long to the howling fantods. The footnote will never be the same.

This Weekend: Open Days and Outside Oxford.

This week in Oxford, and in Britain Generally, is what is known as Heritage Open Week, meaning that many of the country's otherwise exclusive institutions are opened to public view. A few days ago (before I got a little sick) I was able to make it to what is know as the "Exam Schools," which is the building where matriculating and graduating students write their tests at the beginning and end of terms. To begin attendance or complete one's studies at the University, by the way, is referred to by the Oxford-specific idioms "to be sent up" and "to be sent down" respectively. I'm finding that Oxford is a place full of expressions like these-- phrases which somehow manage to combine casual flippancy with the weight of centuries old tradition. They also often seem to do without proper nouns; greater specificity being obviated by the fact that Oxonian things and places are apparently the only significant ones in the world. Anyway, I digress.

The exam schools seem purpose built to intimidate the students who go there to take their critical tests. Here's a view from inside the courtyard.
When test are being administered, this hall and others like it are filled with rows of desks.
A gentle reminder that the exams are timed--a 6 foot clock.
I visited the Exam Schools on Thursday and on Friday, myself and all the other Shimer students attended a compulsory 'orientation' given by the organization that set us up in our housing over here. It turns out the program is run by some pompous, geriatric, rightwing expatriate American ideologue, who kept us as his captive audience in his stuffy offices most of the day Friday while he namedropped Richard Nixon, praised Maggie Thatcher, and summarized the European mindset as "generally pessimistic and lazy." If I hadn't been ill before, I certainly was after.

I decided on Saturday that some time outside of the city might be a good way to try to reinvigorate my constitution. My flatmates and I headed out to the eastern outskirts of town early in the day to see the former barge of Corpus Christi College on the Cherwell River, which had been converted into a house boat which was been opened up by its owners and inhabitants for Open Days. In Oxford's canals a lot of people live in long, low, and narrow barges. This barge however was much larger and apparently a relic from the days in which each college maintained its own barge to service the many sporting events on the river.

Here's a photo the owner had of their barge among others in their glory days along the river bank. As always, clicking the photo will let you see all the details.

It was hard to get a good photo from the riverbank without falling in, but here's a photo of the exterior of the barge from onboard.

There was hardly anybody there and the owners were happy to give a tour and since the living quarters were essentially one medium-sized room it was a brief one. Here are some pictures.

I think I could handle living there.

We came back into the eastern neighborhood of Cowley for breakfast-for-lunch.

Here are the flatmates: Matt, Kate and Raya.

And here is the food (it was pointed out to me that its weird to take pictures of one's food. Whatever.)

After eating, Matt and Raya came with me to The Regal, an old Art Deco cinema in Cowley that had lain abandoned for a few decades and was in the process of being transformed into a nightclub which was opened up for Open Days so people could see it before all the renovations and eurosleaze dance parties ruin the place. There was all kinds of architectural detail and they even let me into the old projection room. It broke my heart a little to see the place torn up but if I strained and squinted enough I could still smell the popcorn and could almost see an old Powell and Pressburger or early Hitchcock playing up front. Here are some pictures.


The lobby's ceiling.

Some of what remains in the theater

The seats on the ground level were torn out to make room for a dance floor, but they hadn't ruined the balcony yet.

The balcony's ceiling.

The concessions area converted to a bar.


After the the cinema, Matt and Raya were lucky enough to find some good bike's at Cowley's used bike shop. Cowley, I think, is the kind of neighborhood where resale bike shops flourish, as the distinction between 'used' and stolen goods seems ambiguous there, at best. It's the kind of place where you're not sure whether to appreciate the bohemian charm or worry just a little about somebody snagging your wallet. And I guess its where you go if you need to buy an organic Asian fusion burger or pot. It also looks like they have a good indie rock club and some cool thrift shops I need to check out. Anyway, without a bike I had to walk home by myself and after bumming around Cowley a little, I decided to take a detour out around the canals that run just east and north of the flat.

Its so green and quiet on the tow paths along the canals, I love them. Here are some more typical examples of the live-in barges.

This is the Isis bridge, just east of my place.

The canal continues north...

and opens up on Port Meadow, publicly owned land and a flood plain for the Thames. There are allotments here where people can rent tiny plots of land to grow vegetables and stuff and there are publicly owned horses and cattle grazing and generally hanging out. I'm not sure who takes care of them. It's not a farm or anything and all the animals are just kind of wandering around in a state of nature. The Thames is really slow and lazy here and there are lots of people riding bikes and picnicking while their dog run around in the water and chase ducks.

All this stuff is a five minute stroll from my flat and a ten or fifteen minute walk from central Oxford. I love it.

In addition to combining the cosmopolitan with the pastoral, Oxford is also the kind of place where, just when you think it can't get more idyllic or whimsical, it does. Like with hot-air balloons. While I was sitting at the riverside, this guy popped up from behind the trees and floated across the sky.

Anyway this is a long post at the end of a long day. I'm done for now. And I'm feeling better so don't worry.