October 1, 2022, en route to Cambridge—The bus to King’s Cross glides by increasingly marvelous juxtapositions: Well & Bucket, Ship & Shovell, Slug & Lettuce, Lamb & Flag, Hoop & Grapes, Plum & Spilt Milk, &c., each intimating its own Aesop's fable. In these first moments in my new English home, I can only fixate on what I suspect might be a national case of “conjunctivitis.” The chronic curly-cue is binding, gap-filling. Ampersand: an amalgamation of and per se and, now an aptly gapless, agglutinated mass of words slurred by time and use and rapidity. Reminds of the slurred image outside the window of the moving coach

~

King’s Cross—I’m thinking quite a lot about gaps at the moment. Gaps, distances, junctions, juxtapositions. Transit does this, I think. A female voice over the station speaker announces the soon-departing train and I marvel at the names dotting the northbound route to Cambridge: Finsbury Park; Potters Bar; Hatfield; Welwyn Garden City; after a while, it sounded like she was improvising percussive disyllabs to keep the rhythm chugging along: Knebworth; Stevenage; Hitchin; Letchworth; Baldock; Ashwell & Morten; Royston; Meldreth; Shepreth; Foxton; Cambridge.

I remember a day very similar to this one in the soon-to-be-endearingly grimy subterranean levels of Boston’s South Station, lugging awkward suitcases, feeling my nerves, my burning naïvité, and aware that I was traveling to begin a journey. I read in capitals ALEWIFE and BRAINTREE for the first time, unaware how quickly these silly-sounding names suggestive of alehouses and arboreal cerebral cortices would become my dear friends. Patinaed with nostalgia and fondness that accrues with use and time, their entries in my mental atlas expanded beyond the simply commutative—a means for getting from A to B, or B to A; Braintree became synonymous with adventure, Alewife with home. I’m turning to a new blank page in that atlas. A, B, now followed by C.

Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.

I look back at those stations on the (now departed) Cambridge line. Hatfield, Foxton, Cambridge. Binomials, too, but any ampersands that once separated said hat from said field or the winding Cam and its nominal bridge seem to have faded or grown obsolete with use and time, coalescing like the white space between the ancestral E and T of the symbolic flourish. I wonder how long it will take for these names to feel familiar—worn of their starch. Yet I already anticipate mourning the wonder that they bring to me in this moment of sensitized newness. The last thing I want is for everything to become a blur or an amalgamation. Strange how quickly we forget to see the wild and absurd and wonderful. I’ll make it my project to keep feeling things as new, crisp, and with joy.

***

December 8, 2022, Cambridge— I came to Cambridge to study English but find I spend a lot of my time learning an entirely new language— nonverbal and bodily; one that communicates in silences and empty space, permits trailing off and going off-trail. I am completely immersed in this new language. Singing evensong psalms in the Pembroke Chapel Choir, for instance, we articulate as much with our inhales as on our exhales, using negative space created by the collective breath of twenty-five to carve our interpretation of scripture, make musical momentum with sonic stillness, and give purchase to melody in the lofty, reverberating nave of the Wren chapel. I find myself often having to translate across a transatlantic gap in musical lexicons, deciphering how long each blip in the morse code of sound and silence ought to last by a cheatsheet scrawled in the margins of my choir folder:

Quaver    eighth-note
Crotchet    quarter-note
Minim    half-note
Semibreve    whole-note
    Noted.

But even this time-table cannot accurately capture the infinitesimal irregularities of pulse that I relish in each weekly psalm: silent beats that seem to leave one feeling momentarily lost, wandering in the echoing remnants of a chord without thought of the notes to follow, finally able to hear clearly the music that we’ve just been throwing into the air.

I find myself moving through term time to the beat of silences, rests, and pauses that govern both song and the poetry about which I write. In contrast to my many previous years at school, I find myself with so much time to breathe and wander what are currently white spaces in the mental map of my new surroundings; finding things by feel in serendipitous moments of unscheduled suspension. Now at the end of my first term—one filled with more uncharted space and free time than I know how to make use of—I find it is these gaps—the white spaces, the transits, the interstices, and the bridges—that charm my days here as much as the destinations, the grand events, and magnificent, postcard-perfect landmarks. I have learned to revel in in-betweens, to delight in the feeling of being splendidly lost—or, more accurately, of being momentarily suspended—and to find joy in small moments that show just how much more I may discover on this year of pause and in all others that are to follow in life’s rhythm.

One of Cambridge’s many features is the ease with which one finds oneself lost in its streets. I have started to learn a new body language—a different way of moving with the world that emphasizes journeys more than destinations, invites trial and error, and imbues joy in the possibility of getting lost along the way. Green signs mark the ‘Way out,’ not the EXIT, and college dwelling places are divided up into Staircases as opposed to Harvard’s Entryways. These small things suspend the need to know where I am and where I am going at all times, which is just as well because I find myself happily disoriented by other features natural to the architecture of life here. Room numbers fell upwards in the first English staircase I met—New Court’s U—and staircases feel eternal owing to the still unfamiliar 0th floor. There is always a queue where there never seems to be a queue, and queues miraculously condense in which no queuer knows the purpose for their queuing. More often than not it is colder and damper inside than it is outside, and this only becomes apparent upon passing through a transept, the way walking through patchy sunlight makes one aware of and thankful for momentarily warm beams or cooling shade. My feet will never not errantly journey to the refrigerated section of supermarkets, expecting to find the eggs next to the milk. I am slowly learning this new language—gradually learning to wander to the left of the path rather than automatically deferring to my right—though I am not sure I ever really want to master it.

With familiarity comes automaticity, and with automaticity a needling sadness or fear that I will soon be unable to lose my way in this beautiful place as I often did three months ago—that the map, gradually knitting itself together, will have no more white space to explore. I read a quote of Walter Benjamin’s a few days ago that I am starting to understand: “to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling.” And no small amount of intention and practice. I am thankful for the time I am given to devote to this practice: to get lost running in the fields around Cambridgeshire on foggy mornings, or among the winding, hilly streets of Edinburgh on the way to find a highly recommended chippy, or in the subterranean labyrinth of London’s Tube, or in a perfectly balanced chord in which all voice-parts disappear into sonic magic. There is no more exhilarating feeling than that of finding an unfamiliar corner of a place I thought I knew by heart, or noticing a new image nestled in a poem I have read a dozen times, or appreciating a lifelong friend’s hidden talent or buried idiosyncrasy.

Moments when I find myself happily lost still exist, only I must remember to pause to find them. Today, walking by the Cam, I was lost in the transformed stretches of Jesus Green, flattened and sparkling in the white blanket of the first snow, which had covered up the diagonal footpaths. I marveled at a bush I run by frequently but never noticed was holly until the hoarfrost shaded the contours of the leaves and berries into a Hallmark card. Taking a different way home, I noticed the happy blue doors lining Portugal Place and spied the minute wonder of another Dinky Door placed playfully opposite Trinity’s grand gates. Daydreaming during rehearsal, I spotted a new name scratched alongside centuries of others into the wooden pews of Pembroke Chapel—C. MARSH, R. Pruce, D.E. DAVY, EVEREST 1789—the defiance of each serifed groove still as fresh as yesterday.

Through repeated drifting I have found home. I hope to continue to lose myself in joy that is to be found in all that is new and strange and wonderful here: to find joy in gaps in my own knowledge, in juxtapositions, in journeys and transits, in feeling influent in this new way of navigating space and speaking in rests and pauses, and pausing frequently and long enough to let undercurrents and harmonies that I have not yet heard sound out clearly.

***

June 9—Stretching days, Room U1—The days stretch long. Daylight extends from 4am to 10pm now, and fingers of sunlight reach through my window in New Court to touch my face with orange heatglow every 4pm. I try to stretch these last days of school out as long as possible, rising as the earliest tendrils of dawn lighten the sky into forget-me-not and keeping lights on into the night while sitting at the computer or staffing late shifts at Nightline.

I think I have stretched the meaning of "stretch" now; it has reached semantic satiation in my phonological loop. I now realize how ironically inflexible the word sounds. So many stiff, clustered consonants. "Days" is a better word for elongation. Now "daaaaays" turns into "daze." Indeed, they have become filled with daze. My whole time here feels wonderfully, magically, eerily dazey. Daisies that smiled brightly along the footpaths of Pembroke a year ago have popped up again already, grinning with their immaculately white, dentine petals. It's far too soon. I feel as though I slept through the winter months—underwent a long, grey hibernation—and now waken, dazed, to sunlight and day and green glitter.

I remarked not too long ago to a friend that I believe another national personality emerges in the British people with the re-emergence of the sun. The light stretches the cheeks and corners of the mouth into a smile, revealing the white teeth behind usually taught or puckered lips. Everything is spontaneous. Everything pushes out from underneath the covers of cloud, topsoil, and crust; daisies, sunlight, smiles.

I stretch every day now. I feel the crack and release. I wonder if that's why they call it a "sun salutation." I am reminded I need to do this more often.

***

June 15—D-Day—I just submitted my dissertation. I don’t feel as I expected I would feel. I have a pit in my stomach and a hole in my chest. I don’t know if this is just the full weight and carry-over of yesterday’s emotional torrent felt in full now that the adrenaline of thesis writing and submission is subsiding.

I feel constantly on the verge of crying. But to mark the occasion, I got dressed, ventured out into the sunlight and Pembroke’s chirping gardens, out the front gate and over to Fitzbillie’s, where I got a fluffy, glistening chocolate caramel bun. I took it over to Coe Fen and enjoyed a bit of it underneath the shade of a tree that overlooks the river. I have no appetite, though, due to that lingering pit and choke... I think I finally understand that word of Carson’s: tocht—that “loveblock.”

Maybe I fear the all-too-quick molting of this student skin I have carried for so long. I have inhabited the life of a humanities student for a magical year and I am reluctant to leave it behind now. Professor Fisher was right—I have been seduced by English, and England, and it’s people. After finishing up with my brooding on the River Cam, I walked to Market Square, where I started perusing the used book stall. I found a Selected volume of poetry by a Welsh poet that I thought R.K. might like. But all of a sudden, "Vienna" by Billy Joel started playing into my ears; I found myself choking back tears.

I think these lyrics broke the dam of emotion that has been leaking for a while. I've been having so many second-thoughts about the path forward recently; I have experienced life as an English academic, of sorts, and cannot rip myself away from this dream of pursuing a PhD here. Maybe it's the summer fever; I don't remember feeling quite as affectionate toward all aspects of Cambridge in the middle of February.

I felt considerably lighter after a chat with E.J.S. in the gardens of Sidney-Sussex--my habitual post-supervision haven. I returned to Pembroke and readied for Jimmy's.

~

Getting to work with M.A. today at Jimmy’s Shelter was also such a blessing. We talked for most of the hour-and-a-half or so I was there about his upcoming play, which I will be typing up for him in the next few days.

I am so happy to see M.A's improvement over the last two months I have been working with him. He glows now. He says he's found God, who keeps him from feeling lonely. I admire his ability to see the hope and the hypocrisy in all social strata. He has high hopes for himself: he will produce his play around Cambridge, put the proceeds to the charities that have helped him, meet the Dean of Cambridge, and hopefully "get himself a student card so that he will no longer be a townie, but a gownie." I think he can get there. He teaches me about gratitude and self-awareness; he is thankful for the little bits of God he sees and gets to spread to people everywhere and wants to put out Good energy into the world to counteract the Bad energy he previously held. "Before, I was between the both of them, fighting up and fighting down," he said of God and the Devil. But God shows him the light in dark places.

One poem of M.A.'s has stuck with me since our first meeting: it describes one of his first nights sleeping rough on a park bench by the River Cam. He wakes up in the dark to see the glimmer and shimmer of the moon reflected in the Cam, before it disappears behind a cloud. He thanks God for waking him up so that he could see that light. He is "grateful to be sleeping outside," because had he been sleeping inside, cozy and sheltered, he would not have seen that light. What tremendous hope this man has. I just hope that I can learn from him, and one day see light like he can.

June 20—I experienced wonder most recently while standing with a crowd of people watching fireworks burst overhead. A friend and I climbed to the top of Castle Mound—an ancient hilltop overlooking the city of Cambridge—to watch the brilliant fireworks set off on the horizon to celebrate the end of the academic year. We ascended and found that many others had had the same idea. Just as dark fell, colors began to burst overhead and the entire chatty crowd atop Castle Mound fell stone silent. No one moved, except to get a better view.

I used to find fireworks so dazzling as a child; now I find watching people watching the fireworks the far more wondrous spectacle. As each explosion lit the throng of upward-gazing heads a different, fast-fading flash of color, every eye glowed with that childlike 4th-of-July wonder I know so well. I marveled at the fascination fireworks inspire. What about these fleeting, fizzing sparkles in the sky—these egalitarian and ephemeral flowers—captivates so much as to demand silence and utter stillness from this crowd? I was suddenly moved when it struck me that every one of these people had paused their busy life—even someone walking down the street interrupted their course to stop and crane their neck—and put aside their cares to watch this glittery show of bursting colors play out in the night sky.

I am reminded that fireworks, though famously fleeting, make their mark on the sky. The smoke lingers—ghosts of explosions past drift in the darkness. Eventually the accreting haze amplifies each spark, and the world becomes glow. And here we are, planted on an ancient overlook, watching this ancient broadcast that we fire up to as if to say: “Look! We, too, have made our mark.’

The open-mouthed smiles that initially played across faces fade into solemn expressions. I see a mixture of pride and the elsewhereness of remembrance shade their looks. There is a collective cheer after the final, triumphant bang. Applause follows, and I can hear it faintly echoed across the city of Cambridge below by similar parties who had stopped and watched, enraptured. We are clapping for ourselves, somehow—for this moment in which we collectively experienced something incredible, and, in a larger sense, for the past year we collectively survived. I suppose what I find most wonderful is this unspoken yet universal acknowledgement of the crowd: “We don’t know each other, yet I saw what you saw, and we witnessed something beautiful together.”