31 May 2012
Everything I do here requires excessive attention. When I’m walking down the street, I have to notice who is around to make sure I safe. Of course, even my pepper spray is illegal here, so I’m not sure what I would do if I weren’t safe. But there are smaller concerns, too. When someone is coming from the opposite direction, I have to remind myself to pass on the left. If I don’t then I could confuse the other person. I have to make sure of my directions. I have to make sure I look the right way when I cross the street.
I had my orientation at New College today. The campus is beautiful– the buildings made of stone, complete with gargoyles or grotesques.
The roses are in bloom. It’s quiet. Everything is picturesque.
In the garden there’s a mysterious mound with stairs that lead to nowhere. There’s also a sign banning everyone from going up the stairs.
New College was one of the sites for the Harry Potter movies. It makes sense– everything in Oxford seems magical. The different colleges are like houses. Students wear robes to exams and for formal meals. Everything is mysterious and made of old stones. And in New College, we have the Harry Potter tree. Malfoy was transfigured into a ferret in front of it, and we’re all quite proud.
I met with my tutor today. (In Oxford, a tutor is the equivalent of an American professor. A professor in Oxford is the head of the department.) Oxford is surprisingly casual. My tutor was wearing jeans and a GAP sweatshirt. We discussed the weather, the subject of my tutorial– Women in Shakespeare, and that I’ll be expected to write a 7-10 page paper every week. It all sounds so easy, so casual, so I’m quite nervous.
Now that I’m a member of New College, I receive emails about college events. Tonight, there was an art exhibit, so I decided to attend with my friends. It was one of the most peculiar things I have ever seen. There were five squares. The first was a bent piece of wood painted a warm red-orange-pink colour and placed on the ground. I suppose it had some nice shadows, but I really don’t understand it at all. I suppose I’m not meant to understand.
The next was a square pattern painted on the floor with modge podge. It looked as if someone had used his finger to draw a pattern like an old English wood carving with the modge podge. Again– quite peculiar. I appreciate the sense of tradition in the piece, and I was also curious to how to student convinced New College to allow him to draw on the floor.
I’m going to save the third for last, since it was the most peculiar. The fourth looked like giant lego blocks from afar.
Yeah. Those are legos. But up close, I realized that the brightly coloured blocks were made of plaster and held molds of teeth. They had everything from pointy vampire teeth to hillbilly teeth to children’s teeth.
The fifth was video screen with two simultaneous videos of the artist facing the camera and moving his face. The climax was when he started groaning and finally walked away. It was titled “Self Deception,” and I concluded that it was one half of the screen deceiving the other. This one seemed a bit more self-absorbed than artistic, but who am I to know what brilliance is?
But the third exhibit took the peculiar-but-awesome cake. At first, it was only a sizable pile of grass clippings. Piles of grass clippings are a dime a dozen around Oxford, so I supposed it to represent Mother Nature and how we overlook the Earth until we are forced to pay attention to it. (As a note, if anyone ever wants to buy a dozen piles of grass clippings from you, demand a dime from them and call the police.)
That perfectly cut lawn means a whole lot of grass clippings.
The pile of grass in the exhibit was perfectly normal, until it started moving. It moved slowly, up and down, as if it were breathing. I immediately concluded that there must be a machine under it to make it move, but there was a British boy trying to convince a girl that the artist was under the pile of grass, in the fetal position, causing the pile to move. The British boy even claimed there was a tube under the pile to get air to the artist. Needless to say, my friends and I had to stay until the end of the exhibit to see if the artist would pop out of his grass pile. We stood by it, discussing our theories, for nearly an hour.
A bit before the exhibit was to end, one of the other artists went up to the pile, bent down, and said “John, John, are you ok?” At first, the pile didn’t respond, so the guy went to the other side and asked again. I am thoroughly convinced that the pile grunted back. We waited a bit longer, and my friend informed the pile that if the artist did not come out, we would leave. We waited a minute, finished our drinks, and left. I suppose we’ll never know for sure what was under that pile of grass, and I like it better that way.
Adventures of a College Student 