On Learning a City

The best way to learn a city, if possible, is through the subway system. Take a few rides up and down the central line, maybe one towards the south and one towards the north, and bada bing bada boom. You’ve learned the city. Or least, that’s how I do it. 

When riding the subway you’ve got nothing else to look at but the stop list so it’s easy to pick up a general direction of how the city is laid out. Then if your memory is vaguely photographic like mine, it’s easy to recall when you’re looking at a map that may not be very detailed. 

Armed with such knowledge, Stacia and I were able to adventure again. We managed amazingly to see nearly every tourist hotspot in London from the Globe to Oxford Circus. We talked to locals and bus guides to figure out the fuzzy bits but ultimately we were able to singlehandedly traverse the height of London. 

Too bad for our feet. 

On Childhood

As we were guided around the gardens of Bignor Park by the lovely Joanna, as we listened to her talks of her grandchildren having elaborate birthday parties in the back yard and a cellist playing while the dragonflies flittered between the trees, I imagined, or rather tried to imagine, what it would be like to grow up like that. 

From my suburban neighborhood, where the backyards butted up against one another, and nothing but butterfly bushes grew, it wasn’t easy. 

We’ve been constantly reminded of the effects of the environment one is raised in on who he or she becomes. We saw Burns’ meager beginnings and Wordworth’s jumbled start. We read of Byron’s jump to wealth and Austen’s lucky connection to it. 

I’ve sensed here in England, perhaps slightly more so than in Scotland, that one’s heritage and family legacy in the past are important. They have great bearing on people’s impressions. Perhaps I’m hyper sensitive of it because I’m from America, the land of opportunity and the American Dream. Anything you want you have (in theory) in America, but here it feels like you have a better chance if you have a bigger family history. 

But I think our poets have proved that it doesn’t matter where you come from or where you end up. If you are destined to write, it will tear itself out of you whether it brings a purse of gold or fame in your lifetime or not. 

I’d never quite grasped the American Dream until I came here and wandered among the masses, both the rural and urban. Now, perhaps I’m slightly more thankful for it, and slightly more sure of success. 

Dearest Jane

Despite never actually reading any of her novels straight through, I’ve always felt attached to Jane Austen. I’ve watched the adaptations of her books, and my favorite of her life, and read her quotes and a few of her letters. There’s something in her wit and her deep perception of the world that I just adore. I can’t get over her. 

So visiting her home, peering out the same window she would have looked out, traveling the same roads she would have traveled, and pursuing the same library she would have used, and most importantly, seeing her writing desk, made her come alive in a whole new way. Anne Hathaway had already succeeded in making her seem larger than life, but being in her home was something else entirely. 

We were so lucky to have had her. 

On the Bristol Tour

I think most of us had issues with today’s tour, so I wont go into my complaints. Instead, I’ll discuss a curiosity involving our “Slavery in Bristol” tour. 

I promised Hally that I would research the mysterious “Edward Colston” whom we saw memorialized in the center of Bristol. So, upon return to internet connections, I did.

Amazingly enough, Edward Colston (2 November 1636 to 11 October 1721) was a famed, and wealthy, slave trader. He is one of Bristol’s most famous and philanthropic merchants, one who has schools, hospitals, streets, and more bearing his name (not to mention the statue, errected in 1895). He joined the Royal African Company, which specialized in gold, ivory, and human beings–a company that our tour guide mentioned. She also spoke frequently about wealthy merchants in the area. So why was Colston, the only one memorialized in bronze, not mentioned in the tour?

I have a few theories.  

1. Colston is a very controversial figure. Despite his contributions to Bristol and his public works, Colston remains, in today’s lens, a confusing character. Some praise his good deeds, others damn his practices. (Personally, I find him quite damnable, and believe that making one society greater at the expense of another does not make one good or worthy of statues. Some in the city share my sentiments, and there have been outcries to remove the statue and replace it with a memorial to the lives lost in the hideous trade, and one person even vandalized it in 1993, writing SLAVE TRADER all over the statue which was quiet in the details of his wealth). But this isn’t a particularly convincing argument, since controversy makes any tour better. It’s part of the reliability of a tour guide and the realism of a city to know that not everything was silver and gold in the past.
2. His story contributed to her sermon about merchants doing good, as if it could erase the bad. She mentioned the man who left an endowment to his “servant” and the ones who saw to it that their “servants” were buried in a fair and “extravagant” (read: not a mass, unmarked grave) manner. Perhaps though, since he wasn’t an active merchant during his life in Bristol, he was deemed unnecessary to mention. 
3. Perhaps the guide is a Colston fan, for his philanthropic works, and didn’t want to drag his name through the mud by associating him with the slave trade. She didn’t seem particularly appalled by the “merchants” she talked about, so likely she respects Colston and didn’t want to soil our view of him (in the form of the nice statue). Still, this seems like it would be unlikely, since she’s a tour guide, she’d have to be respectful of and aware of all the history of the city, for better or worse, and is being paid to tell us about it. Also, Bristol’s first elected mayor refused in 2013 to participate in Colston Day celebrations, calling his reputation “perverse,” and since he was elected it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the rest of the city believes the same. This would make a town historian in the minority, which isn’t a good output for the city. Then again, the statue still stands.

Honestly, none of it adds up to me. Colston had all the trappings of a good example of one of Bristol’s “fine merchants” which our guide so loved to discuss. He was famous, memorilized, and controversial. He did a lot for the city on the backs of the slaves he bought and sold. He was central to the creation of Bristol as we saw it today, and was deeply embedded in the history of the city that we learned today. And yet….

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this trip’s surprises anymore.

On Abbeys

Ever since Melrose, I’ve been overly interested in abbeys. It’s for no religious reason; I don’t consider myself religious at all. What’s interesting to me, now that we’ve visited three, is the comparision.

 I’d never done much research or had much interest in abbeys before. I may have discussed monks once or twice in a class for ‘gifted’ students in primary school where we were allowed to study subjects slightly more advanced and slightly more outside our normal studies as second through fifth graders. No, in our medieval studies, the knights were always more interesting. The moats of castles were more fun than the chapter houses in abbeys, the suit of armour more extravagant than plain wool robes, the daring sword fights more exhilerating than the hours of praying, singing, and studying. In fact, I only remembered a few things about my vague studies of monks: they prayed a lot, they only had one outfit, and they often had a laugh by tipping candles of hot wax from the balcony onto the balding target of a fellow’s head beneath. Perhaps now the tables have turned only because we’ve visited abbeys, and not castles on this trip. Who knows.

I’ve already talked about my Dryburgh experience, and I won’t go into it again, but it really sparked my interest in abbeys like the ones we’ve visited. I began thinking about the abbeys a little differently: not as ruins or an empty shell of stone, but as a skeleton of a creature that was once vibrant with life, as a place where humans lived and worked and existed. It was home to someone (lots of someones) and it is haunted by its history. 

When we visit abbeys, I like to walk alone. I walk along the pathways, following no realy guide but my own insinct, peeking into cubbies labeled “pantry” and imagining it full of harvest fruits and a monk or lay brother filling out an inventory, or stand under a window as a daydreaming monk would have as he stared up at the endless dome above, or walk along the outside walls, dragging my fingers along the crumbling, rough stone and wondering who might have leaned against the cool stone in a secretive break during a day of hard work. 

Perhaps its easier for some to feel the ghosts of the poets or monarchs who visited or lived in places we go to because they have a name, an image, an entire history laid out for centuries. It was easier for me too at first. And then I walked up the stairs of Dryburgh, and I got a vivid mental image of a young monk hurrying up the stairs in the near dark, and I had the moment in the Chapter house. It became real to me there, and it carried over into Tintern.

I was already excited about this abbey because “A Few Miles…” by Wordsworth was one of my very favorite poems we read, one that sort of clung to the back of my mind and grew more powerful each time I read it (the other being “A Summer Evening’s Meditations” by Barbauld). The abbey was so much grander than I imagined. It awed me. I walked along the paths, touched the walls, and experienced the abbey with my imagination before even reading anything about it. 

Of course, upon reconnection to wifi, I researched. I read a small pamphlet about the abbey that I’d bought on a whim with ice cream, and simultaneously searched online for more information. That’s when things got interesting. The world of monks and abbeys stretched out before me and awed me with its depths. 

When I’d walked through, I noticed that the abbey was grander than Melrose and Dryburgh, but in a strange way. It was taller, vaster, and grander, but not ornamented. Melrose had been decorated with various statues and motifs on its outside walls,  but Tintern was bare, despite being awesome with height alone. It had a large infirmary, an extra wing for the abbot, and larger areas for laymen, where Dryburgh and Melrose had none of these. I learned that the Cistercian monks valued solitude, poverty, and simplicity even higher than the Benedictine monks who moved to Wales from France to convert the populations. The Cistercian monks wanted to be left alone to worship in peace and they were. The creation of a larger abbey with more ammenities would suggest that they never planned to, nor needed to, leave. However, I was curious about the sheer size of the abbey. Nothing about it suggested “poverty” as the monks valued. I learned that the original abbey was smaller and only after a large remodel by a nearby Earl did the abbey we visited come to exist, though I wonder why the monks let so grand a structure be created for them. Perhaps it was mere necessity. It’s estimated that 400 monks lived there at its peak time around the 1300s (around the time the remodel was completed). 

I also noticed there were no gravestones. Melrose and Dryburgh were speckled with gravestones, and some (Sir Walter Scott most notably) were interred inside the abbey walls. Stacia and I researched and she found that an archeological dig recovered multiple bodies buried in the abbey ground. Even women. This stands out to me. Women were not monks. Local people were not interred in the abbey because it was private for the monks (non-monks weren’t even allowed inside), and the locals didn’t particularly care for the French monks who harked back to the Norman invasion era. So who are these women? Laborers, the archeologist suggests, and likely malnourished ones. My theory is that they were local farmers who wanted to be buried on holy ground, no matter the denominational or historical contexts. I have a few theories about the lack of gravestones as well: (1) they were poor people who couldn’t afford lavish markers, (2) the stone was looted to build more castles nearby (of which there is significant evidence, especially concerning the lack of a roof), (3) they were left to ruin and were cleared away when they were confused for rubble when the area began to become more popular thanks to Romantic artists. 

Abbeys are fascinating and I will contiue to learn about them, but won’t bore you with it again. 😉

On Curiosity

I have an insatiable curiosity. I’ve always a asked (too many) questions, even if they aren’t particularly relevant. I just get an itch in my head and I cannot rest until I scratch it. In class, I ask my question(s) and move on. On my own time, I can spend hours wandering down paths seemingly unrelated until I’ve forgotten what I wanted to know in the first place. You can see why I can never get any work done. 

Upon arriving at our hotel, I got the itch. Questions popped in my mind faster than I could complete them, and thanks to a very kind bellhop who carried my bags, I was not distracted. Upon returning from dinner, I scratched. 

First, I tried to research the hotel itself. The floor plan and stair arrangement were far too unconventional to have been designed as a hotel. The stairs didn’t accommodate suitcases (or trunks, since the building looked at least 100 years old in some places), so it must have been something else. Unfortunately, the website was unhelpful, saying only that it was an Edwardian manor restored (Edwardian was roughly 1900s – which I also spent time researching). 

So unhelpful. 

Then I took a moment to research the town and that search was much more fruitful. Wikipedia said it was a town (Loxton) of about 192 people, with settlement history dating pre-Normans. It mentioned, ever so casually, that it was most famous for a murder in the 1950s. Interest piqued. 

I searched more. I found the town website, quaintly maintained since 1999 (and keeping the original format). Beside the file of every birth/death/marriage/baptism in the town since the 1500s and a small history of the antiquated church, there was a tab about Tales. One about Guy Fawkes celebration, jubilee events, and other celebrations (which, I’d imagine, could only be called quaint with a 192 person population). Then there’s the tab discussing the various origins of a so called “town curse” which either involved jilted Romans or Danes depending on who you ask (which prompts me to ask: how does a town of fewer than 200 people refuse a Roman or a king? Unfortunately, I found no answer and I’m left to my imagination). Another about a “Great School Board Brawl” and a cave discovery both in the 1800s, and finally, the Murder story. 

I’ll spare you the boring details but the jist is this: philanthropic heart-of-the-town woman (O’Conner) invites elderly German woman (Ms. Bul) to live with her in the cottage given to O’Conner following the women’s former employer’s death. A curious Exorcism-like event occurs and O’Conner kills Bul by ripping her eyes from her sockets. Grisly, right? Mary Shelley would swoon. In the end, O’Conner is found “guilty but insane” and is locked away in a mental institution until her own death in 1983. 

So maybe this wasn’t as enlightening and nice as finding out about a castle ruin that related to two of our writers, or learning about which equally famous writers stayed here (I’d bargain none), but it’s still is interesting. 

Every place you visit, every town you drive by, every name you pass over on a map has its own life. It has its own story and history, some more colorful than others. Maybe some lines are fruitful and some are dry but the chase goes ever onwards. One link leads to another. And another. And before you know it, you’ve learned something new. 

And at the end of the day, knowledge is the best souvenir we can have (except for a good cheap book). 

On Flowers

“May all your weeds be wildflowers.” It’s a phrase my mother says often. Even as she yanks up handfuls of the tiny purple plumed weeds in our flower beds or the dreaded wild onion sprouts in the grass or the unpredictable dandelion in the flower pot. 

 Weeds in America are never wildflowers it seems. They are ugly and damned sprouts that must be snatched from the earth like sinners on Judgement Day or chopped to bits like Anne Boleyn on the block. There is no hope for an innocent dandelion that dares to grow on the manicured lawn. And God help the grass that ventures so boldly to grow above the three inch limit on the side of a rather empty and scene-less stretch on highway. The medians will be mowed. The bushes will be pruned. Nothing will grow unless we tell it. 

In the UK, it’s different. Nature paints with her own brushes and everything has its own will. Flowers that grow in the ruined window of an Abbey get to stay there. Daisies that grow like white clouds napping on highway banks get to stand their full height, faces gleaming in the sun. Dandelions may spread their seed far and wide. Mustard may grow on the wrong side of the fence. Cracks may be filled with moss. Sidewalks may be covered in grass. The world may exist not for humans, but alongside them.   

How to create an English garden. 

Step 1: let it grow. 

The Shelleys

I know what you’re thinking: Shut up about them already! You were more fun when you talked about sticky toffee pudding all the time — at least you didn’t cry about it. 

My suggestion would be to not do the obvious and give me more pudding to shut me up, because I think the sugar rush would have me reading even more and chatting even louder. So bear with me here and I’ll try to keep my blathering in public to a minimum. (No promises about the crying though.)

I came to England thinking, ah! yes! the motherland of Mary and Percy, the place where I can find a Frankenstein tote in any old bookshop and droves of Percy’s poetry and portraits. Perhaps I can even sit where Mary once sat or stand inside her cottage door like she used to do. 

Alas, the world isn’t so kind as that! Aside from the special access to the first edition Frankenstein (THANKS JEFF) the Shelley memorabilia has been few and far between. We saw one notebook, a pocket watch, and a few post humous portraits (which looked nothing like the portraits I’d ever seen of Mary). 

So I googled it (as I do) and found only one hit for “Mary Shelley museum”: the Keats/Shelley house in Rome. It came rather obviously to me after that. The Shelleys spent most of their life together abroad in Italy and the Alps. In fact, after eloping, they hardly returned to the Isles again until Shelley was dead and Mary returned with his heart in her clutch bag. 

Upon reading Shelley’s Ghost, (which I haven’t yet finished so forgive my plot holes in research) I found that about 1/3 of the Shelleys things (mostly portraits and letters and the like) were donated to the Bodleian by their daughter-in-law, the intriguing Lady Shelley, in the 1890s, upon the condition that some not be opened or publicized until the centennial of Shelley’s death in 1922. Even then, nothing was to be displayed or shared beyond the curators’ door. Hmm. 

So what few documents we have are stored away, only accessible through a friend of a friend or the book which I purchased. Despite spending the remaining 30 odd years of her life in southern England, there is no Mary Shelley house to visit. It’s a private residence, where she used to live, and any place she visited or lived or whatever is not likely marked with a plaque. 

I suppose we can blame the nomadic nature of the duo on their lack of proper museum, but wouldn’t it be more fun to blame secrets? I’ll continue to read the book and let you know what I find. 

On Buying a Small Library

Apparently all my logic and reasoning skills fly straight out the window at the phrases “fits perfectly in a bag for travel” or “buy one get one” because I now am carrying the equivalent of a small library in my suitcase. If I keep at this trend, I will have more books in my backpack than survived the Reformation period at Oxford. 

If anyone sees me even glance at a bookstore again, or even dare to say “buy” and “book” in the same sentence, please shake me until I drop all my books and forget buying another one as I gather them back up into my arms Hermione style. 

In my feeble defence, I am buying books (save one copy of Frankenstein) that I do not own, nor (save Dorian Gray and Frankenstein) have even read. They all relate to authors we’ve talked about on the trip, like Jane Eyre via Haworth village, Jekyll and Hyde via Writers’ museum, Dorian Gray via Oscar and Oxford, Ghost of Shelley via Westen and Dove Cottage. And I’ll never be able to resist a different edition/cover art of Frankenstein, simply because it’s not my nature and would be considered a great sin by the Powers that Shelley. 

For now, the remainder of my self-allowance will be only the necessities….and postcards. 

From Country to City

Today was probably the most stressful day since take-off/landing. 

After days and days in the hills, the mists, the silence of the country, where we could wander through sheep pastures and climb hills and discover castles without ever encountering another soul, we were thrust into the wild and busy streets of Oxford. It seems to me that the wilderness of the city is twelve times as dangerous as the wilderness of the country. Where once I dogdged sheep piles, I now dodge busses. Where once I breathed the sweet mountain air perfumed with wild flowers, I now pinch my nose to avoid the city reek. Where once I stood on hill tops and admired the multitude of hills and valleys, I now stare at the tour groups and wonder how they all manage to get into one hotel. 

I never believed in the City Mouse v. Country Mouse tale, where one could only belong to the city or the country in spirit. I grew up in Atlanta suburbs where a trip to the city was equally as alluring as a trip to the country, merely because neither were the limbo that is the suburb. At Agnes, I also belonged in psuedo reality where I could, in a window of ten minutes, belong to the bustle of Decatur or the serenity of the empty quads. I’ve always existed in a half-world, but until now, I didn’t realize where my true loyalties lie. 

In my American suburb world, a city is large and busy and dangerous (thievery, violence, etc.) and the country is barren and hot and dangerous (snakes, ignorance, etc.), and here, in the UK, understandably, the paradigm presents itself differently to me. The cities are large and old and full of people who know exactly what they are doing and where they are going (at least on the surface) and they have no patience for tourists or confusion. I’m sure there is violence, but I don’t feel as unsafe as I would in America, and the only violence I’ve encountered (thankfully) was a scathing side-eye from a pedestrian when I blocked up too much of the sidewalk. The country is different from any I saw at home. It’s vast and beautiful, wrought with ruins and herds, and every blink is one pang into my heart for the moment of beauty my eye lost in the effort. It’s people are kind and patient and warm, and the only violence I experienced was a rather funny slip down Post Knott’s View upon descent. I feel quite at home in the country, and I long for it. When I move here (not if) I plan to live in Winderemere or the hills of Scotland, and only visit the cities on business. I suppose I’m rather Wordsworthian on that measure. 

This Country Mouse likes the view. 

The Importance of Rest

It has been, since Atlanta take off, very difficult for me to close my eyes. I fear missing a single second of this place, the scenery, the culture, the atmosphere. I refuse to nap on the bus (only five minute bursts) because I don’t want to miss a single blade of grass or a single sheep or a single brick on a wall. I want to soak it all up, carry it home with me in the backs of my eyes so when I close my eyes in my room, I see not darkness but the land of the United Kingdom that I so love and yearn for. 

However, my practices caught up with me. Sunday I could barely keep my eyes open and dragged my feet everywhere. It came from a combination of late night adventures and early morning wakings and eating all the sweets and treats offered to me. My mind was  whispering onward, onward while my body was screaming stop, stop and I think my day greatly suffered, in comparison to the ones before, due to this mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion. Sunday night, I resolved myself to getting rest, so by seven pm I was washed, caught up on my journal and blog, and ready for bed. I fell asleep almost immediately and stayed asleep until eight the next morning. I woke sore but rested and was ready to take on the day. I didn’t drift off once or feel to tired to go on. I was reinvigorated. 

It’s important to take in all the sights and culture that you can stand. Just don’t forget to make sure you can stand it. 

First Edition Frankenstein

When Jeff placed that book in front of me, hidden in the pale gray blue protective cover, I knew what it was. Normally, I try not to expect things as a safety net for disappointment, but my instincts were sure and steady and there would be no room, I knew, for disappointment. 

  
Hands trembling, I opened it, reminded to slow down and be gentle. I was alone in the room, just me and the book and Mary. I’m sure she was there, standing at my shoulder, smiling at my joy, remembering a similar girl who opened an identical copy 197 years before and who felt exactly the same. 

It was beautiful. The leather well preserved, the pages strong and soft, the font large and unsmudged. It was everything I might have dreamed it could be. 

  
I can’t explain the joy that swelled so large in my chest that it burst from my eyes. I can’t explain the feeling I had that Mary was there and watching and smiling. When I left, while recovering, I sat on a bench and five blackbirds flew down from the roof top to sit with me, watching me with their silver eyes, peaceful and knowing. Mary sent them to me, I think.

  

Stacia and Abigail Wander, Episode 2 (feat. Hally and Lauren)

Stacia and I quite like to wander. The way we see it, we’ve got to fit as much into these 20 days as our bodies will allow, and so we wander to find a little something extra to remember. 

The only difference between this trip and the last to the castle: we planned it. When Khwaja told us about a lookout point and a bit of free time, we set to planning right away. When our afternoon of learning was finished, we picked up fruits, veggies, nuts, and other such foods from the Tesco, packed our bags of poetry and journals, collected a map from a very helpful front desk clerk, and set off. This time, we were joined by Hally and Lauren (p.s. anyone is welcome on our adventures, just tell us to wait for you!), and we set off. 

  
The path was not as easy to follow as a paved, marked, and posted American trail would be, but I think it was better. We talked to locals when we asked for directions, and through trial and error, we saw much more of the back country than we could have any other way.

We made it at last, after wandering like the Wordsworths through the fields. My lungs were screaming by the time we made it, but all discomfort was evaporated by the view. I still can’t believe it was real. It doesn’t seem fair that something could be so beautiful.

  
While Lauren and Hally wandered, Stacia and I found a rock and grass shelter to keep us from the wind. We sat back, talking and sitting in awed silence, and when the sun set, we cleaned up camp and started backk (this way was slightly easier than our entrance) and laughed hard when I slipped and sat on the hill, pondered when we saw two half decayed rabbits on the hillside, planned as we reached town and came back. 

  
We slept like babies. 

Time Travel

Something about Scotland and England is unexplainable. The places cling to their past so that a local on the street could tell a story about an archbishop and a shepherd from 1100 like it had happened yesterday. They take such pride in thier histories, building monuments and preserving every ruin around. It’s so fascinating and new to me, since America, partly for being young and partly for being “efficient” has neither the history or the respect for history in the same way as here.

I think a lot of it has to do with how little the British Isles have modernized, how few people want to live out in the middle of nowhere, and how unchanged the scenery is that really makes history a living, breathing thing in the UK. 

I could stand at the top of Smailholm, looking out over the vast hills and crags, over the sheep and cows, over the wild emptiness of the space for miles and miles around, and I could clearly imagine living there in the middle ages. I could imagine watching the space, spying an enemy clan or English Army and lighting the beacon fire. 

I could ride through the Borderlands and imagine riding a horse miles and miles before reaching an inn or abbey or castle. 

I could stand in the cloister of Dryburgh Abbey and imagine the sweepibng architecture and piercing spires, imagine hearing the hymns of the monks and the gurgle of the river. I could stand in the Chapter Room and imagine it filled with cloaked monks discussing business. 

I could stand outside Rabie Burns’ home and imagine him bustling out the door, manuscripts in hand, greeting those he knew on the street and casting longing backwards glances to any pretty lass he saw. Or standing in Abbotsford, I could imagine him leaning into the ruined windows of the Kirk and wondering what creatures might haunt the place at night.

I could walk in the Wordsworth garden in Cockermouth and imagine the laughter of Dorothy and William as they played among the flowers. I could walk the halls of the upstairs, while the harpsichord music played faintly from the drawing room, the bustling of Mrs. Wordsworth and the hurrying of the maids up and down the stairs while I observed Mr. Wordsworth strolling the gardens beyond. 

I could stand on the hill where Coleridge and Southey lived and imagine them starting out of the house, heads bent in conversations of their utopia, as they hurried down the hill towards Dove Cottage.

I could imagine Sir Walter Scott climbing out of the guest bedroom window in the wee hours of morning, blue in the pre-dawn light, and out into the gardens, a dog at his heels. I could imagine William Wordsworth pacing the garden as Dorothy sat scratching away to capture their shared genius. I could see Dorothy starting down the road to town after a letter. 

When we went to Post Knott Point, I felt like Dorothy and Colridge and William, trekking through sheep and muck, hopping over walls and scrambling over fences, stopping for a moment to admire the view or talk to a local. They all became strikingly alive to me then, as I walked in the fields, without roads or streetlamps, without maps or guides, just wandering along, breathing in the world, and breathing out poetry.

It isn’t hard to fall in love with this place. 

Ayrshire Walk

Tonight, we had free time. Time to rest, to unwind, to relax. I planned to spend it unwinding with my phone (though that has become increasingly uninteresting to me lately, likely due to the vividness of life that the phone screen can’t capture), snacking and perhaps  making a calll or two to the States.

Instead, I ended up taking a walk.

Not just any old walk. A brisk 3 miles-one-way plus a small hike, walk. Stacia and I, hoping to get a breath of sea air, walked an hour to a castle ruin perched on a cliff down the beach in South Ayrshire. We originally believed it to be the ruins we’d seen from the road, but as we drew nearer we realized it was a different castle (who knew a coast less than ten miles long would have more than one?) but our realization was not a disappointing one. We walked as far as the coast would allow on the beach, crossed up onto a paved walking path, crossed a bridge, then went along the paved path until the car park gave way to a worn and narrow footpath in the high grass. We walked longer, and the castle became larger. We crossed back onto the beach, and gazed up at the castle. It was dizzingly high (6 stories by best estimate) and sickeningly close to the edge of the black cliff. Only one turret remained but it was no less impressive without the others. We then climbed up a steep path to the flat of the hill where the castle squatted. 

  
There were no plaques, no guides, no indication at all of the history or even a name. Stacia climbed into a window and looked around the inside, and found a walled up side door to a dark basement that freaked us both out (something said “stay back” and it wasn’t a sign or the sheer drop three steps to the right, but a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach and an instinct at the back of my head that screamed “danger” louder at the single brick peephole than the 360 ft drop behind me). We left soon after, finding no plaque or giftshop or sign post. 

  
Upon returning, I looked it up. I figured it would be hard to find a name for a castle ruin in Scotland. There are almost more castles than sheep. I searched online, and found it, after scrolling through a list of 20+ sites in Ayrshire alone. 

It was called Greenan, and it used to be much more. An entire castle-city by most estimates, resembling Castle Black from Game of Thrones, sparse but not less impressive for it. There were more buildings, most of which can only be whispered of by stone clearings or second story doorways leading to no where. 

It was likely built in the 1100s, though the building that stands today was renovated in 1608 (as marked by the carving above Scary Door that we missed when there), by the Kennedy clan. With the photos Stacia took and our memories, we were able to plae together the original floor plan given in website desciptions. It was abandoned at some point, though it still belongs to descendants.

Interestingly enough, it had connections to our travels. 

It inspired a Walter Scott poem, “Tragedy at Ayrshire.” While waist deep in an internal conflict, the clan Kennedy killed one of its own for revenge of a similiar murder. 

It appeared in sketch form  in Grose’s Antiquities of Scotland, the artist of which, urged Burns to create “Tam O’Shanter.” 

If I’ve learned anything about Scotland, it’s this: Even if it’s three miles away in distance, it’s likely not three degrees away from the Romantics. 

P.S. Many people have died by falling from the castle, and it was the last place at least one Kennedy was alive. Perhaps that instinct had nothing to do with the darkness of the space or the possiblilty of it caving in. Perhaps it was something else. Either way, I didn’t look in that hole long at the dark basement, and I quickly dismissed the idea of using my phone flashlight to get a better look. Whatever was in there, I didn’t want to see it, and likely, it didn’t want me to either. 

Bleth’rin on

Burns is great for a lot of things (ie Tam O’Shanter, To a Mouse, and his ‘alledged’/’assumed’ looks, etc). Scotland is great for a lot of things (ie the Countryside, Dryburgh Abbey, little sheep, etc). Both are great with one thing: language. 

The Scots language (as it is, as Kelly preached, a language and not a dialect. I agree, seeing as language is not just words, but words strung together, and cultures [big or small] manage to string them together in all sort of ways. Idiomatic phrases and connotation are the future’s language barrier definers, I believe, but I digress) is so fascinating to me. 

Before, upon reading Burns the first go round, I found it confusing and alien, even, to a degree, frustrating. I would have to butcher the words aloud to get a bearing on them, and even then the strangeness of the shapes would only confuse me more. I can’t count how much I lost from his work for the simple barrier of language. I gave up on Burns, quickly, and was glad to be finished with him (even though I did enjoy annoying my mother with my loud and dramatic failed-Scottish accent). 

Then we came to the cottage. Words enthrall me, and it didn’t take me but a moment to notice the ones painted on the walls. Put into word by word definitions, they became more approachable, more easily understood. I moved away from the technology of the reinactent screens, and became deeply engrossed in the crude wall paintings, really meant only to break up the boring white of the cottage walls. 

Some were whimsical and strange: Ram-stam – thoughtless, crambo-jingle – rhymes, gumlie – muddy, rowt – to bellow, hawkie – a cow, aiver – an old horse, lunt – smoke, wean – child, spunkie – wil o’ wisp, bleth’rin – talking idly, biggin – building, corbie – raven, tappit – hen.

Others, when said aloud, sounded like familiar words, only blunted by the Scottish accent: kirn – churn, ream – cream, aits – oats, saw – sow, grund – ground, claver – clover, kirk – church.

Then, in the museum, the descriptions were written in the Scots’ language, so I could learn more words as I learned about Burns. It was like a crash language course, and I loved every moment. 

I plan to one day live in Scotland, and hopefully, I’ll get to learn the language even more. My own accent seems flat, my vocabulary bland, next to such a colorful and beautiful language as that. Ah, but Burns already told us where that path goes: “O wad some Power the giftie gie us / to see oursels as ithers see us.”

P.S. Was anyone else surprised that they use “wee” as much as they do? I’d always assumed it was one of those weird stereotypes that Americans exaggerated. Apparently, they like the word a wee bit. 

P. P. S. “Rabbie” is a much better nickname, not to mention more interesting, than “Robbie.” 

Dryburgh Chapter Room

    
I’ve never felt as at peace, and even, I think, spiritual, as I did standing in the Charter Room at Dryburgh.

 I happened across it alone, buzzing from the high of climbing a very steep tower staircase and nearly slipping down it, and after poking my head into a tomb and a small array of pieces of statue described in plaques. I didn’t go into the statue museum room because something about it felt off. I’m a believer in spirits and energy and the supernatural, so my superstition urged me onward instead. I went into the next chamber and that’s when I felt it. 

Perhaps it was the high of good after coming off the dramatic low of discomfort in the previous room that made it so powerful.  Perhaps it was the faint but beautiful monk song echoing off the walls that gave it a far away feel, the aura of another and now lost world. Perhaps it was how the room, vast and high vaulted, embraced instead of swallowed me. Perhaps it was the spirits of all those gentle monks who lived and worshipped so long ago, or the old and wise stone itself as it was gently worn down by humans and nature. 

I stood in the center of the room, looking from window to wall to carving to floor, and I was lost in it. I ceased to exist. I was nothing but peace. My eyes became wet, but the tears didn’t sting like they would usually do. Instead the tears were just there, under my eyelids. I wondered if one could be allowed to feel pain in such a place. I left the room, wandered around more, and sent others to the room, wondering if it was me or the room. I wandered around the campus more, through the graveyards and ruined halls, to Walter Scott’s gravesite, to the various cellars beneath the abbey. But I kept thinking about that room, how it tugged at me like it has tied a rope around my chest. I returned later, took videos in a vain and desperate effort to record what I’d seen and felt, but I doubt it would have the same effect. I couldn’t begin to explain it, so maybe the video could provide some insight to someone. I stayed for a while, walking the perimeter of the room, letting the music fill my head and the feeling consume me. I sat on the seat where monks sat to confess and plan. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I despised leaving it. 

I’m not a religious person. I’m spiritual, but not religious. I don’t follow rituals and practices of any church or creed, only my own thoughts. I believe in God and spirits and an afterlife, but I don’t believe in religion. 

There was something in that room. Whether it was God or the spirit of some benevolent monk who sought to convert me, I couldn’t say. Whatever, whoever, it was, it was kind and gentle and peaceful. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.  

  

Bite Sized Tour Guides

i really enjoyed the children giving us a tour. We were able to interact more than if we’d all stuffed our ears with those recordings! (Though we might have missed some interesting details.) They were all so eager and professional.  

But this little sprite of darkness was my favorite. 

   

The Concept of Elbow Grease and Cleanliness

I actually saw with my own eyes people sweeping, with a broom, the sidewalks and gutters on the street along the Royal Mile. People using their own arms to sweep with brooms with bristles. In the street. I saw a man painting an iron fence with a small paint brush. I saw a man scrubbing a storefront sign with nothing but a rag and a ladder. I saw a man painting an entire store front on his own with a bucket of paint. 

Perhaps it’s the architecture, the closeness of the buildings that forbids large machines and high power tools. Perhaps the brick or wood is too brittle to be power washed or spray painted. 

In America, some high tech spray painter would have the storefront painted before lunch. The fence would have been painted in a factory by a machine. The street would have been swept with a large truck if it was swept at all. 

There is no litter in Edinburgh. The trash cans aren’t overflowing. Everyone dressed impeccably with sharp haircuts and every car is sparkling. 

So what gives?

Judith suggested a differing degree of personal responsibility that American cities and citizens don’t have. I agree. I think Edinbugh is not only rich with herrings that demands its generations respect, but also citizens who are willing to give it. 

It’s a lesson we Amwricans, who so pride ourselves on efficiency and technology, could stand to learn.   

Mary Shelley

from the guardian.com

---

First, a summary.

On Creation

            From the hour of her birth, Mary Shelley knew great loss. Her birth came at the indirect price of her mother’s life. Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the great thinkers of the era, died a mere eleven days after her daughter’s birth, and thus began Mary Shelley’s most famous conflict—one between creator and creation. Until she was 25 years old, Mary Shelley never experienced life without loss, and this conflict along with her creator conflict, formed the backbone of her greatest creation of all, Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley was born on August 27, 1797 to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin at a few minutes past eleven at night (Grylls, 10). The occasion, usually marked with great joy, was instead one of immense pain. After suffering for ten days of puerperal fever, introduced by the unsanitary practices of the doctor, Mary Wollstonecraft died in great agony which was only compounded by the agony of Godwin (Seymore, 27-30). Thus Mary’s first encounter with being abandoned by a creator began. Wollstonecraft’s death created several layers of abandonment that would later feature in Frankenstein. First, Wollstonecraft’s death prompted Godwin to remarry, a choice which proved to be problematic for the growing Mary, as the two were constantly in conflict, and Mary was sent away from her family to Scotland because of it (Mellor, 12-13). Secondly, Mary likely felt immense pressure to contribute to the literary and thinking world as both her parents did. Mary was taught from her mother’s work and became a foremost scholar of Wollstonecraft’s teachings, and was often found at her mother’s grave side, seeking “solace from nature and her mother’s spirit” (Mellor 20). Lastly, Mary felt profound guilt at her mother’s death, as she felt “her own birth had killed a woman brimming with vitality” (Seymore 130). All of these conflicts come up in Frankenstein, as the creature’s self-adoption into the De Lacey cottage family ends in his decent into violence, his creator’s reputation haunted him throughout his journey to Geneva, and the Creature’s guilt over his creator’s death ends in his own assumed death.

Mary Shelley’s traumatic experiences with death did not end with her mother. During her relationship with Percy Shelley, she was pregnant five times, but only one child survived to adulthood. Her first pregnancy at 18 ended with the infant’s death after only a few days. This death greatly affected Mary, and she dreamed that the child, who perished silently in sleep, could be roused from death by being warmed by the fire (Seymore, 130). Her second pregnancy was more successful as the child was born healthy and even served to mend the animosity between Godwin and the Shelleys (Powers, 23). When little William was three years old, however, he contracted malaria in Italy, and died, which devastated Mary, as the “hopes of [her] life are bound up in him” (Seymore, 231). Her third pregnancy followed the likes of the second, but after an exhaustive journey across Italy, little Clara died less than a year before William (Seymore, 214). Her fourth pregnancy, though the only successful one, was the one most plagued by her dark thoughts. Despite her “dangerous state of misery that feeds on itself,” Mary agave birth to Percy Florence Shelley in the fall of 1819, and subsequently “engrossed herself in his care and in study” (Seymore 238-240). Her final birth ended in a dangerous miscarriage that almost cost her life, and facilitated an even more dangerous mood, and a self-portrait from the time might “suggest someone who might feel that her life had become unbearable” (Seymore, 299-300). These experiences would later be compiled and rearranged to create the scene of a mad scientist creating life from death.

Spawning from a horror tale contest between friends, the tale of Victor Frankenstein was born from a dream. While vacationing in the Alps, with her husband and other famous companions Lord Byron and John Polidori, Mary was struck by a dream of a creature standing over the bed of a young man (Shelley, xxvii). Thus, Frankenstein and his Creature were born.

There are many fascinating themes in the short creation of the Creature and the longer aftermath of Frankenstein’s triumph over life and death. First, “death and birth were…hideously intermixed in the life of Mary Shelley” and that is directly evidenced by her idea to write a tale of one man’s own terrible journey with life and death (Moers, 96). Secondly, Mary investigated the “anxieties of pregnancy” which were widely omitted from literature at the time (Mellor, 41). In doing so, Mary examined the causes and effects of serious conditions like baby blues and postpartum depression and psychosis, all of which she likely experienced firsthand. Finally, Mary toyed with the idea of man being the sole creator of life, and the unnatural and horrible effects of such (Mellor, 40). Frankenstein is one of the English language’s greatest science fiction tales, but it is also one of humanities greatest examination of birth.

Mary wrote in Frankenstein, “I could not conceive the hundredth part of anguish I was destined to endure” (Shelley, 62), but history proves that indeed she could. The tale of Frankenstein is written from hindsight as the doctor tells Walton his horrifying adventure. It is a story, a work of fiction, and yet it is deeply wound up in the life and trials of Mary Shelley. As expected, the work included various events from Mary’s life prior to publication such as the loss of her mother, the death of her half-sister Claire and her children, and her distance from her father, but amazingly, it also includes features of her life after publication such as the death of Percy, the loss of her son William, and her various depressions and isolations following the events. Frankenstein is a testament to the horrors that existed at the time with birth and the creation of life, but it also is a testament to the resilience of a woman who, facing all punches the world could throw at her, fought her demons in fiction. Mary Shelley was abandoned all her life, by her mother, her father, her children, her husband, and her friends, and often, like the Creature, was vastly and painfully alone in life. Mary Shelley created life many times, each time as disastrous as the last, except for one occasion, and each time added a pang into her heart, just as the doctor struggled through a mire of death and life. All at once, Mary was Frankenstein and the Creature. Finally, like the doctor, a self-death slowed the river of her pains as after Percy’s death her life was “oppressively calm” (Johnson, 4), and like the Creature, she was “borne away by the waves and lost in the darkness and distance” following the death of Percy (Shelley, 213). And yet she lives on, ironically, as the mother of science fiction.

---

Now, an outline.

Research Outline

---

Finally, a bibliography.

Bibliography