Our bus driver's name is Chris. He is perhaps early fifties, balding, glasses. He is polite. After being in this country for all of five days it still feels odd to see him groping the driver's wheel on the far right hand/passenger side of the dashboard. It feels odd to enter the bus from the opposite side of the vehicle. It feels just plain weird period to be driving in the wrong lane.
It is vertigo inducing.
 |
| Chris |
I can’t get over just how overall lush the British countryside is, like light flooded over a golf course that spreads out in every direction. I sit at the side window. Jim Baker is talking about the Daisy train, especially since Dandelion Loreelia sat next to Spencer and looked down into her petite lap and offered flirtatious blushes in retort to his ongoing commentary on the human condition via Mormonism earlier in the day and now is back with her original group. I can’t stop thinking about Harmony and wondering why I haven’t sauntered into her in the slightest since the Roll right stones, figuring that she must have been in the first group shepherded into Blenheim palace and have lanced her fork into her pub-potato at the antipodal watering hole.
 |
| Intellectual riveting Bus #4 |
Instead I am on Bus #1 and I am on what is slowly being christened the Daisy Train.
It is the Dandelion Train. It is disparaging. It is ripping every facet of her persona. Jim is talking about her mother. Spencer males a comment how Dandelion is so skinny she probably uses a toothpick as a tampon.
Since our meeting last night the Big Ten has become quite adept at getting their chops in surreptitiously.
Dandelion sits up front with her group. She is making a conscious endeavor to ignore
I turn around in a stiff-lipped scowl.
"You guys should lay off of her. She really isn't doing anything to you."
The big ten responds by stating that Daisy is just like a campfire, everyone gets to stick their weenie in.
Apparently after dinner the final night of the Moat House Daisy and Spencer were in the elevator together. Purportedly Daisy tried to kiss Spencer and purportedly did the Mormon thing swiveling the opposite cheek before boasting about the experience to everyone on the trip.
Baker states that Daisy is so stupid she thinks that Taco Bell is a Mexican phone company.
Josh is looking out brooding into the window refusing to participate. Whenever anyone has asked Josh a question over the last 48 hours it always somehow seems to segue into the Skit show this pending week. Kenny is completely lost in his discman, preaching the eternal tonal verities of the Spin Doctors. Several of Daisy's 8th grade peers have seemingly taken a liking to Kenny.Since our meeting last night the Big Ten has become quite adept at getting their chops in surreptitiously.
Dandelion sits up front with her group. She is making a conscious endeavor to ignore
I turn around in a stiff-lipped scowl.
"You guys should lay off of her. She really isn't doing anything to you."
The big ten responds by stating that Daisy is just like a campfire, everyone gets to stick their weenie in.
Apparently after dinner the final night of the Moat House Daisy and Spencer were in the elevator together. Purportedly Daisy tried to kiss Spencer and purportedly did the Mormon thing swiveling the opposite cheek before boasting about the experience to everyone on the trip.
Baker states that Daisy is so stupid she thinks that Taco Bell is a Mexican phone company.
Bryan from Alaska who can run the sub-five minute mile is just Bryan from Alaska who can run the sub five minute mile.
“It is the Daisy Train,” Jim Baker thrusting his right
arm up and down like he is trying to get a truck driver to beep at him, stating
all aboard the Daisy Train. Even Justin who is usually sedated is getting in on
the action. We are in Oxford. The group as a whole has just been reprimanded
the night before for juvenile antics, we are in Oxford and no one is paying
attention to Vivian.
Chris makes a comment that Dandelion is so hairy when she spreads her leg there's a sign reading WELCOME TO BUSCH GARDENS.
Chris makes a comment that Dandelion is so hairy when she spreads her leg there's a sign reading WELCOME TO BUSCH GARDENS.
“You guys need to get off Dandelion. It’s not like she did
anything," I say, trying to be somewhat of
gentleman. Trying to stand up for a girl I hardly know.
Hey yo Hair, maybe we’ll get off of Dandelion and get on
that fat girl you are always drooling over. There’ll be more room that way.”
The entire big ten collapses in a chorus of laughter.
Even Banky turns shooting me a look as if to tell me that he’s got ya there.
***
***
At the beginning of our tour Vivian informs us that Oxford , after the University of Bologna, is the oldest university in the world and by far the most prestigious, divulging the etymology of the town OXFORD because it was the area where Oxen could easily be forded over the Thames river.
“Hence the term Ox-ford.”
The Big Ten are still ripping into Daisy.
The Big Ten are still ripping into Daisy.
I am lost in Oxford University. There are cobbled streets. Even a anemic row of locked bikes teems with lost alchemical knowledge . I think about the fifteen seconds I was enamored with Tamera and how she is attending by far the most prestigious American university in the fall. For a sneeze I wonder where I will be studying come four years time. It is Oxford and it is only a terse stop for the rest of our trip. It is Oxford. I stop and get a cappuccino for 5 pounds. It is Oxford and I am completely done with the cadre of imbeciles known as the Big Ten. It is Oxford and all I want to do is lose myself in the faun-colored jigsaw of enjoined buildings, three hundred year old pipe-tobacco ridden shrines to academia. It is Oxford and the lawns are so manicured they look like a digitally enhanced tennis court. I want to burrow myself in a 400 year old library where 85% of the books hail from before 1850. For perhaps the first time in my life I want to purloin a sheath of paper and scratch out my thoughts, scribing in the same fashion I wrote my Young Columbus speech, the ersatz architecture of alphabetic emblems, write in the way I stayed up late last Dec. writing my father a letter conveying him my feelings for a creature I later deemed that I somehow needed to sacrifice in order to arrive at this place, my peers juvenile, demeaning.
 |
| Vivian, Rabbi Dan (behind) Daisy Train far right |
Words I have heard somewhere in the nocturnal weep of
dreams.
Exeter, Brasenose, Worcester, Newton, Magdalen,
Balliol.
Vivian is pointing at a building resembling a medieval planetarium stating that this is the Radcliffe camera, even though it doesn’t look much like a modern day camera now does it? She asks how many of us are familiar with the writer’s JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis and then points her umbrella at a pub where she said they used to congregate several times a month to discuss various fantasies in their respected writing. She points again to the Camera building confessing that it is hinted to be the inspiration of Sauron’s temple in Lord of the Rings.
Vivian is talking about the threesome of semesters. She mentions Machaelmas and Hilary, the father and the son and the holy ghost. She talks about Encaenia. Which she explicates to the group that Subfusc is the attire worn during examines Baker monikers the word by inserting the the f-bomb in the second syllable, shooting Vivian a look like she walked right into that one.
My Gideon bible is still lodged in my front pocket.
A lanky kid with what looks like a burgeoning vicars
haircut from Dan’s group keeps getting in my way every time I try to take a
picture. He has a friend named Mario, pronounced Merry-oh. It’s driving me batty. He’s in 8th grade and trying to be
an honorary member of the Big Ten. Twice he has tried to get on the Daisy Train and twice counselor Dan has shot him a look stating Don't go there. As I am trying to get a picture of the Quad he steps right in the middle of my picture. A month from now when I am scouring through my pictures searching for any optical scent of Harmony or Mark I will discern that I have more pictures of his lanky, off-kilter profile than I do of anything else on the trip, not even knowing his name.
"Move," I tell him trying to snap a shot as he sides steps the opposite direction.
Somehow I picture half of Mark's group lining up single file in front of the Admissions office, handing applications to a cloaked gourd-nosed wigged prof, watching him assent, saying yes several times before inviting them inside for a complimentary interview.
Vivian mistakes our age and comments how of course as many of you will be anticipating college in the next couple of months, I'm sure many of you are familiar with the Rhodes scholarship. Vivian inquires if any of us are familiar with the Rhodes Trust. I have no clue what the Rhodes Trust does, I raise my hand and say that Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, not knowing that being a Rhodes scholar means that your get to study a semester gratis at Oxford.Vivian says yes, yes, quite right. Dan the future Rabbi interrupts Vivian, feeling compelled to sound out the acronym eff-why-eye before he speaks.
"I don't know how many of you have gotten the opportunity to meet counselor Dylan on bus #3 but Dylan was actually a runner-up for the Rhodes scholarship from the Midwest."
I met Dylan at orientation the first day. He looked like cool surfer dude.
Both Trevor and Sir Charles seem awed. Dan goes on to tell us that there are 1000 of potential candidates each year and Dylan was runner-up, meaning if for some reason the recipient is unable to attend Oxford next year Dylan gets to go in his wake.
I am nodding my head awed. Behind me I hear Jim Baker state that Daisy is so Ugly even hello kitty said goodbye to her.
 |
| Kenny |
Trevor is calling me Harry now. He nods and says that he
likes my sweatshirt. He tells me just think Hair, when you get back home you’ll
be able to tell everyone that your first college tour was of Oxford.
Without inquiring Vivian looks over my shoulder and asks me if I know what the Latin motto for the University as a whole translates as.
No. I say. She then quotes the Latin, Dominus Illuminatio Mea.
She then says that the Lord is my Light.
Without inquiring Vivian looks over my shoulder and asks me if I know what the Latin motto for the University as a whole translates as.
No. I say. She then quotes the Latin, Dominus Illuminatio Mea.
She then says that the Lord is my Light.
We are headed for London, all of an hour and a half away.
Without asking Kenny comes up and places the headphones on my ears.
"The Spin Doctors are so good, man. You are going to love them, man."
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