Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History

Today I'm well behaved. And today I'm making my own history.

Today I'm making a memory. Quite possibly a memory that will be one of my favorites from this trip. More memorable than seeing The Tower of London, taking a cruise up and down the Thames River for hours, numerous pub crawls and High Table (Oxford Tradition) dinners, going to Paris, Amsterdam, Belgium, Germany, and London.

Today I'm doing nothing. I'm doing absolutely nothing and it is utterly and fabulously glorious. I'm sitting at my desk with my computer doing two of my favorite things--discovering new music and writing an English paper--looking out one window over the serene and delicate University College courtyard and through another window that peers into the lives of the street walkers. I have two different worlds combined in one room. And the opposite of it all confuses me. The street is crowded with double-decker buses, impossibly loud sirens, and people boasting different accents and languages while the courtyard is white-noise-quiet. It's so quiet that there is a natural buzz in the air that you can hear (and yet seems to not exist at the same time...). It's like someone trying to whisper something in your ear that bears no importance at all, but you pretend to hear it if only to be worthy of the secret and feel the softness of their breath on your neck. Every time I sit here, I wonder at the possibility that it can be so quiet through one window and so inexorably loud through the other. And that these two worlds are separated merely by a stone wall built hundreds of years ago.

With all of the windows and doors open, different breezes flow through our three-room abode. Scents of lavender and fresh cut grass mix with the customary fish and chips and inevitable street-smell that comes with living in a diversely-populated city.

I plan to go for a run later. And make myself look like a citizen of this historical city instead of another tourist with a camera in my hand, snapping pictures of anything and everything so that I don't forget it all.....but will.

I'll always have those pictures of me standing in front of some monument or another. And they'll always be worth about the same as when they were taken--next to nothing. Not that I don't appreciate history or being able to travel and "see the sights". Because I do. But those things aren't what makes an impression on me; they don't make me grow, change, or become a better person.

Instead, it's days like today. When I do absolutely nothing. But sit. And think. And wonder. And discover. It's when I take things slow and really allow them to naturally process through who I am and help form who I will be. And this means just sitting here and allowing all of it to happen. Being completely open to whatever thought wanders into my mind and allowing it to work itself out.

So while this isn't any exciting breaking-news history where someone famous dies or a human accident throws our natural world into a frenzy, it's still important. It's important to me and who I was and who I am and who I will be. It isn't any one else's history. It's mine. And it's something I'll always remember, even though there won't be any pictures of proof.




And with that, I'll leave you with this.