24. March. 2010
Term is over, and many of the students in our program have started to trickle out of Oxford, either to return to the States or travel in Europe. Mostly, this doesn’t affect me too much, as I haven’t gotten too close with many of them. Tomorrow, though, my favorite person I’ve met here is leaving. Shana from Scranton.
So, of course, she wants her last day to be awesome.
We start the day off hungover. A bunch of us went out the night before so that everyone could say bye to her that way. The party atmosphere is an easier goodbye than personal ones, I find. Goodbyes are tough no matter what.
After bitterly complaining about our heads, we head to a place called Tiger Lily for me to get a tattoo. On my right leg, I got the crest of New College, the college I’m associated with here. Shana, a few weeks before, got a similar one (although a lot more elaborate than mine) on her side.
The tattoo artist’s name is Mad Mick, and he is a middle-aged British punk, with a myriad of tattoos on his body and a thick accent that sometimes makes it difficult to understand what he’s saying. He’s fucking great.
He introduces us to Dave, an Irish fellow who works odd jobs and who speaks six languages and has a few Masters degrees in Linguistics, one from Oxford. He and Mick make quite a pair. Mick always winds Dave up, much to Dave’s annoyance. So they constantly bicker, but in a way you can tell is really endearing.
After Mick finishes my leg, Shana and I get some food at this wonderful pub owned by a Welsh vegan. This is of note because most of the meals at most English pubs contain meat; The Royal Blenheim, on the other hand, not only has vegetarian options but vegan ones. And also, the owner is a charming guy.
We all – Mick, Dave, Brian, Shana and I – go out for drinks at a place near Tiger Lily. I wish I could explain how hilarious Mick and Dave are when they’re together, but I’m afraid I can’t. They have this dynamic that belongs on a television show on HBO. For example, the argument they have over “Star Trek.” Mick always thought that Captain’s Log was Captain Slog, an invisible character, instead of the journal of Captain Kirk. Dave simply can't believe this. The ensuing conversation had me in tears.
After three or four beers, Shana, Brian and I head over to Christ Church to see David Eagleman, a neuroscientist and a fiction writer who wrote a wonderful book called Sum, which consists of forty different hypotheses for the afterlife. The stories are, of course, not about the afterlife at all, but about human life. They are insightful, clever and moving.
David Eagleman, though, is slightly less charming than his stories. He walks out in front of the audience and stands before us in a superhero pose silently, holding our gaze for a few moments before beginning to read from his book. He is a very brilliant man, just a little pompous. He makes an annoying comment about how the New Atheists and religious people have created a stark world of either/or, whereas Eagleman qualifies himself as a “possibilian.” The silliness of his term notwithstanding, his remark about the so-called New Atheists irks me, as he creates a false dichotomy between a handful or writers (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc.) and a juggernaut like Christianity. Eagleman is merely trying to place himself separately from all of those extremes so that he’ll seem inoffensive to all and so the unoffended will buy his book.
I ask him a question relating to this.
He says something about the “hypothesis” of atheism.
I say, “Is atheism really a hypothesis, though? Isn’t it more of a response to other hypotheses?”
And he agrees. He says that Dawkins, for example, would completely agree with his “possibilian” assertion that certainty is nearly impossible to have on matters such as the nature of the universe, etc.
So even though Dawkins would agree with his “possibilian” philosophy, Eagleman still insists that there is a fundamental difference between him and the New Atheists.
Whatever.
Besides Eagleman, the Oxford Literary Festival has allowed me to see a bunch of writers: Philip Pullman, Martin Amis, Dave Eggers, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, and a handful of other panel discussions or lectures on other topics. I was supposed to see Richard Dawkins himself, but he cancelled a few days before the event. Bummer. The Festival was incredible, anyway. It was so inspiring; after every event, I go home and write, or brood about how I’m not writing. Either way, I feel like a writer, as these seem to be my two default settings: writing or berating myself for not writing.
Afterwards, we all head home. Shana still has to pack her bag, so that is the next endeavor. As she does so, we reminisce about the term. We recall staying up all night writing essays about Shakespeare. We both had our Shakespeare tutorials on the same day (in fact, right after each other), so we’d often end up pulling all-nighters together.
We remember walking a few miles along the Thames, away from the city, to a remote restaurant called the Trout.
Or the time we went to a party at our friend’s house and I got to play guitar, something I’ve only gotten to do a few times here in Oxford, and how we played songs and sang obnoxiously and drunkenly loud.
Or the time we ate Jesus Waffles in Cambridge.
Or, most importantly, the animosity that existed between us in the beginning. We used to not really like each other, probably because we’re so similar in attitude. And how even once we became friends, we would still fight. Vociferously. I’m not talking about little tiffs; I’m talking about screaming arguments.
Once, while walking home from a party, we fought so loud and vehemently, a cop stopped us to ask if everything was okay. What was funny was how suddenly we broke out of the fight and laughed. Our fights were never about anything significant, and, truthfully, we sometimes enjoyed them.
Shana and I have had a lot of fun together, and it’s a bummer that she’s leaving. It makes me see that my time here will soon come to an end. Oxford has been a kind of purgatory for me, a break from my life but one that didn’t simply stop it. Instead, it pulled me out of my life, allowing me to view it from the outside, meditate on it, and progress personally even if everything else was, in a way, on pause.
Shana is bright, funny and, once you break through her tough veneer, very sweet. I’m going to miss her around here.
We spend the last few hours hanging out, relaxing, as she has a bus to catch in the morning. It was a great day, the kind of day we wish we had more often here. A good last day for Shana.
The next morning we walk to the bus station. As I said, goodbyes are tough.
I hope things work out for her and that she’s not stuck in Scranton, PA for too long. It would be a real shame. She deserves a lot more.
So, here’s to Shana P. Murphy from Scranton! Good game, kiddo.
