Back to An Education

**I thought I posted this on here recently, but I cannot find it. If this is a repeat, I humbly apologize. This is one my favorite things I have ever written, which ought not sound boastful-- rather it is my recollection on one of the most beautiful moments I have written down (there have been others comparable but I have not yet recorded those in printed word). A good thing to remind oneself of, I think. The following is from a post on my English travel blog, dated December 6, 2009.**

My feet have not been this cold since my birthday last year, when I swam in the ocean at midnight. A February ocean, that left my feet numb as nails for the half hour it took with my own searing knowledge to feel the life come back into them. I do not need the ocean to make my feet feel this cold, and I do not need it to feel others things either. I love the ocean because it makes me feel closer to life, to God if it's best to put it that way, than anything else as consistently. Many things have the same power to varying degrees... films for one, a smile in someone's eye, feel of the Earth's heartbeat through a granite face. The stars and moon are perhaps the next best indicators however, and they offer the additional quandary that the same moon I sat before tonight has been admired and feared and questioned by every other being before me to behold the night sky.

Tonight I felt the reason I came here, felt enough to validate my entire three months. In fact, it rather validates the past two years since the last time I felt this way... I suppose you could say it is personal, but I hold nothing of my life sacred wholly unto myself: I have always felt that when the moment comes that I face the final bar we all do, who cares? I am lucky to have no secrets to hold, I suppose, but this isn't personal in that way. It is mercurial though and difficult to define, if not impossible, as feelings are.

I saw the Lone Scherfig film An Education tonight. I have heard a great deal about it. Shia LaBeouf is reportedly dating the newcomer star Carey Mulligan who is reportedly in line for some critical awards in the next few months for her performance. Mulligan plays a bright schoolgirl in 1962 upper middle class Britain-- her life is dull, boring, and jammed full of studying in hopes of going to Oxford. Enter an older man, who shows her wonderful worlds of adventure, art, culture, jazz, Paris, and lies. I won't tell you how it ends, since I rather recommend you see it yourselves, but it is exquisite. I think films are magical, but when the right one catches you at just the right time... something much more profound occurs. It is why the opening shot of Across the Universe makes me almost want to cry (a lot of reasons for that, I mean, it's Jim Sturgess). Or perhaps why I saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2 something like six times in the theatres despite mediocre reviews...

The film tonight sparked in me so many ideas, so much existential philosophy, so much self-reflection... so much passion. I could barely gather my thoughts and I didn't want to because it felt right, like a necessary luxury, to be carried along on the waves of my rapture. I stepped outside the theatre (past two chaps who looked quite fit, but it was dark) and began my walk home, the usual path past the library to my hall. Before I even rounded the corner of the theatre building, however, I looked up and met the luminescent face of a half moon, grinning in eternal divinity. I literally stopped, just in front of some people, spun on my heel to the side, and took another path, slighter longer, to get back, so I could stay a bit longer with the moon. There is a giant pine on campus there in that open space which has been garlanded with strands of bright white Christmas lights. It looks like the stars fell onto the tree to sit among the branches. So many people walked by without noticing... but one woman with very long light blonde hair was taking a picture. I'm glad.

I have not seen much of the stars or moon since I have been here. I always love to look up and admire them, which is a novelty I took quite for granted in California. It doesn't happen much here, which is something I was told right upon arrival. I walked back towards my college, the air the very crisp sharp cold that is unforgiving but not cruel... it makes one feel alive, like ice water, if they're willing to feel it. Crossing the bridge to the front doors of Eliot, nearing the frame of the main entry, I suddenly veered to the side, down some steps, under the bridge, and out towards the open hillside beyond Eliot. This might have confused the the boy dressed in a Santa costume and his friend who were speaking at the top of steps which made a more direct path to the walkway, as I passed them twice rather than walk past them to their steps, but I kind of prefer it that way.

As I stepped off the path where the hill slopes down to Canterbury, a wide space of lawn spotted with a few trees, a few benches, and beyond some woods, homes, and the glowing cathedral.... I took off my shoes. I wanted to feel England through the palms of my feet, straight up to the tip of my head where the moisture from the afternoon rain was wreaked havoc a la Topanga from Boy Meets World (more frizz than I think is legal). The ground was freezing cold, the grass more marshland carpet than blades of greenery. Every step squished with oozing fullness down into the mud, though the grass was clean, covered the sea of liquid dirt below. I walked to a bench not far from the path but far enough. A tree blocked the cathedral, which was disappointing until I realized it was much better to be without the weight of man's history lying before me. Behind the bench was a great sparsely built yet fully blooming pine, wide and vast and dark against the lights of Eliot Hall.

I was cold and raw, Canterbury laid before me, the moon above, and countless stars in the deep black vault above, free of grey cloud impediment save at the very edges of vision. It is difficult to say how I felt, except I felt full. Full of life, passion, knowledge, desire, energy, wisdom, fire, and ice. It sounds tacky, I know, but I am not sure words can encapsulate the feeling. I don't think they should.

It is the feeling I get from acting... almost. Or rather, acting is the only way I know to use that feeling. The last time I truly felt that much unobstructed passion for life in such a forceful single wallop was about two years ago, when someone whose opinion on the matter I deeply respected told me I was a truly good actress. When I left the dinner party that night I sat in my car and cried. I don't cry often, but I cried then, because I was too happy and too full of that passion, that life, to contain it. That is how I felt tonight... and I cried. I sat on the hill, just me and the moon and England, cold and raw and on the verge of everything, and I cried because I love it all so much. All of it. Every bit, of everything.

Eventually I walked back, squelching across the lawn, put on my little black flats, and tromped back to reality as an automatic sensor light caught me in its sudden shine. It wanted to be helpful, I think, but there are other kinds of energy much more natural and much more important.

One of the rooms with lights on was emitting the distinct notes of the Rocky theme song as I return to light and society. There was something obnoxious but admirably ironic about that.

I am back in my room, feeling full and also drained. Those feelings are always present for me, but usually for purposes of practicality and efficiency they stayed nicely under control somewhere snug in my psyche where they emit little bursts of optimism and true happiness as needed. But there are times when they are stripped bare and come forth full force... those are moments like tonight. They are rare, beautiful, and divine. England and I have had a moment. That is why I came here.