I'm back in New York. It's still novel, saying that. I'm back in New York. This is home and I haven't quite learnt to call it home yet, the way Oxford was home, and is still -- but that's for later. Too many memories that I can't think about don't quite dare to remember and have to write down before they slip away. Martin Amis said that in every writer's heart was a sliver of ice that allowed him (her) to transform anything and everything into material for writing. Plundering your own memories -- and inevitably other people's memories and other people's experiences -- for writing fodder. Or to put it another way: reworking memory/experience, transforming it into something else, something lifted over and above the literalness of ordinary life. Metaphor. That's from Jeanette Winterson. -- You know, when I get my act together, all this will go into a book some day. -- (He looks over at me.) Will I get named? -- No. That's not how it works.

And so at random --

London. I'd forgotten how much I liked London. Or rather, I'd forgotten I liked London at all. This other London. The walk from Angel Islington down to Covent Garden in the evening. The grand arches of the market -- the last few stallholders packing up their throws and pots and bangles -- the guy with the guitar singing Simon and Garfunkel's 'Coming to America', and I laugh and look for a quid, how can I not give him something? -- the acerbic busker changing Ronan Keating's song, singing 'I'm broke but I'm happy' -- it falls flat when I try to describe it. Black coats swinging past. A child calling. Blonde hair and perfume. Someone fumbling for a coin. The old graceful buildings. There is a grace in London that New York never achieves.

What's happening to my writing? Or was it always this stilted and I never noticed?

It's the same for Oxford. Columbia is pretty but it doesn't have the quiet arrogance, the self-assured beauty, above all the grace that Oxford does. That Oxford has without trying at all, a grace acquired through great age and great deeds. Oxford. Walking past the Rad Cam on Guy Fawkes Day listening to the sound of fireworks exploding everywhere, remembering a night in the library last year, in the Upper Camera listening to fireworks not reading the book in front of me wishing I were elsewhere and then looking up to see one perfect starburst of fireworks through the windows, like a gift, all the more perfect for being unexpected; jumping up and running to the windows to look for more fireworks while everyone returned to their books -- or a different Guy Fawkes, in Somerville this time, running out from the room to the lawns to watch the fireworks and returning windblown windnumbed laughing to the meeting (I remember writing a letter to you that evening, covertly, baby I miss you more than words can say. One more letter you will never get.) Walking through Oxford walking through wading through memories. The tree in Holywell Quad in New College, the one in front of the porter's lodge, has lost half its leaves and the other half has turned yellow. In first year that tree was right outside my window and I measured the seasons watching its leaves; first the top half turned yellow and the bottom stayed green and when the bottom leaves had turned yellow and were clinging on precariously to the branches the top branches were bare and soon the entire tree would be bare and that was when I knew winter was here. The two trees at the other end of the lawn, flanking the steps, were burnished red; in the spring they will be white, laden with blossom, and when the wind blows the flowers will lift into the air dancing like a bridal shower. And then I was out of New College; there are just so many memories one can bear at a time. First thing I did -- apart from go to Brasenose -- was go to the Parks. Alone. To see the autumn leaves and to try not to remember watching the sunrise playing frisbee walking by the river feeding the ducks; I had forgotten how many times I had sought solace in the Parks. First thing I did when I got back to New York, after dumping my stuff in my room, was take the walk to Central Park to see the autumn leaves. Three blocks down Central Parkway and it was my first time in the Park alone. First time in autumn. Leaves of pale yellows and browns as if painted with sunlight and the occasional burnished red-bronze flaming in the midst and trees clinging on to red-dapped green and kicking through dried leaves looking for leaves to send to you pressing them in the book of poems I had brought along because of course I had to have a book -- I'm not telling this well. There was a tree with a branch extended like a hand in welcome, dark wood snaking its pattern in that midst of yellow-green, and if you stood right under it and looked up into the filigree of leaves it seemed that you were in a cage with layer upon layer of leaves delicate as a spiderweb stretching out around you. There was wire fence around the lake and stars like leaves caught on the wire mesh. I picked up a spray of red leaves and tucked them into my jeans pocket when I went to the supermarket later and for that time wore a bouquet of autumn leaves.

I would write more about England but I can't find the words can't begin to face the memories. Walking through Columbia at night I want to write about Low Plaza and the way the lamplight spills onto the steps and creates inviting pools of shadow that one can sit in and look up at the stars, and in a way in writing about Low Plaza I'm writing about the Clarendon. About sitting on the steps with chocolate from the Tuck Shop with trashy magazines from Borders to watch the sunlight fade away on Broad Street with kebabs late at night talking about Rousseau and Saint-Simon with Boots sandwiches looking at the PPE Reading Room looking at our nemesis. I'd write about the silence of the Lehman Library basement where time dissolves and think about the PPE Reading Room and about that sunset one evening, close to the finals, postcard-spectacular, and in the windows the reflected rows of students superimposed upon the purples and reds and golds -- or perhaps that time at New College in the garden after the library looking up at the stars talking saying hey whatever else Oxford was it was this; it was friendship and grace and a starlit garden; or that time with ice-cream from the Tuck Shop in the garden on a bench talking about --

I can't start to list. I miss you, you know?

I meant this to be about the trip to England. A trip back in time in so many ways. Or -- a trip to lay certain things to rest. Oxford. London. Some things are over and done with. I could cry then but now back in New York I only feel blank. It's all still too raw. I came to England with little more than a handful of poems and I'm leaving -- I have left -- with very little more than that.