A Blank Page and a Cappuccino

For you see,
so many out-of-the-way things had happened
lately, that Alice had begun to think that
very few things indeed were
really impossible.

- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

04.09.2014 - Another brisk, bright blue Oxford morning. Another start at Turl Street Kitchen with a delicious cup of soy cappuccino. This place is always bustling with people, and yet, because there are several rooms upstairs and here on the main level, it's never crowded. And people spend time here. There's no such thing as coffee to-go.

It's funny. Being here in a coffee shop in Oxford. I could be anywhere. There's a myriad of people here. Not only locals, but students from other countries. A song is playing that I like. Sitting here amidst a handful of students who are busily working on papers while sipping cappuccinos I wonder what it would be like to be a student here. Would I come in here to write? Would I enjoy it this much?

Yes. I think I would.

Most of my writing has been done here, in Turl Street Kitchen. Just me, my blank pages, and a cappuccino. It is the perfect place for it. In the middle of the city I love, and yet tucked away from the main street. A hideaway for writers.

As I meander toward the end of my stay here in Oxford, I ponder the passage of time and the sadness that will linger with me when I leave this place. I was reading John Donne and his poem "Song" from a small book I picked up here at an Oxfam Bookshop:

O how feeble is mans power
That is good fortune fall,
Cannot adde another houre,
Nor a lost houre recall!

But come bad chance,
And wee joyne to it our strength,
And wee teach it art and length,
It self o'r us to'advance.

I seek to add another hour and then another hour to my stay in Oxford. That is because this place offers so much to me and I soak it up with an eagerness of a child that just cannot get enough. I embrace all that Oxford offers me because that's how God made me. I am filled with glee when in bookshops and walking around colleges with all the history and architecture. How do I translate that glee to others? How could I inspire others with my quiet, bookish soul?

All I know is to share it. So that is what I am doing. That is what all these blank pages are for. To be filled up with words of ink. I don't question it. I just know it is what I should keep doing.