Depressing places I have lived.

While in the bookstore today, I started thinking about some of the most depressing places I have lived. Firstly, there is Moscow. Not the center, absolutely not; Red Square, the Kremlin, even the subway stops beneeth this part of the city were a molded kleidiscope of color. It was the flats, the apartments that skirt historic Moscow that brought on my feelings of gloom. Each constructed in the same drab Communist gray, they sat like generic gravestones in an overcrowded cemetary. The interior provided no relief: hallways and elevators reeked of urine. Sometimes, you had to strategically pick out a dry spot on the lift and hope the old rusty shafts did not jostle the vile yellow liquid around you. Still, the quiet magesty the Russian people thrilled me, elegent details left over on pre-Stalin buildings inspired me, the spirit of a nation carved out of ice that could not be crushed.

Then, there was Africa, where expansive townships, casket stripmalls and orphaned babies dying of A.I.D.S. left me feeling hopeless and confused. But there was also the green mountains, the savanna filled with wildlife I had never before seen, the roaring shout of Victoria falls, gnarled trees, children that would break randomly and beautifully into song.

And finally, Oxford. Beautiful, ancient, scholarly Oxford. The colleges with tiny, obscured entrances that lead to green courtyards and quads. The latin, the four hundred year old pubs with names like "The Eagle and Child," and "The Three Goats." It was winter: dark and cold and intimidating. I couldn't stop thinking about those who had walked down those cobblestones before me. They had come to study, to work, to raise their families. They had built the buildings I entered so casually. They decorated with color and vibrance and were no longer here to see it. Cemetary stones were everywhere, even carved into the middle of town. Everything whispered, "They were here." And now "they" are gone. As soon will I. "Hurry up, hurry up!" Capture all the living you can in the time you have left. The beauty of Oxford is the fragility of life. This is the lesson for those who would hope to be its students.