Arthur's Seat

 

Dear Diary… 

Just kidding. 

Unless? 

Really, I’ve been trapped in a routine, and it feels weird. It looks something like this: 

1. Wake up around 8:00. Close the window (it’s cold), take a sip of water (also cold), bundle under the blankets (still cold). 
2. Get out of bed, make a bagel or toast in the oven (it takes a long time), sit at my desk, stare at my notebook (don’t write a word). 
3. Around 11:00, the writing cohort (delightful phrase for a wonderful group) has begun to gather in the postgrad room in the LLC building. I amble over to join them, listening to music. I ignore the “Pedestrians Prohibited” sign posted beneath scaffolding and walk under the scaffolding. Sometimes, for variety, there is mysterious chunky substance outside the pub halfway through the “Pedestrians Prohibited” zone (don’t think about it, just step around it). 
4. Write in companionable silence (chat with friends).  
5. Go find food. 
6. Return home. Look at Arthur’s Seat with a sense of awe as I round the corner to Pleasance (how does it glow like that?). 
7. 17:00: time for a shower (the only five minutes a day when I’m warm). 
8. If we’re doing something social (drinking), it happens at this time. We do social things (drinking) quite a bit, but it has admittedly died down since freshers’ week. 
9. Around 20:00, I want to go to bed, but that’s only 8:00 P.M., which is upsetting because twenty is a big number and seems like it should be the time to sleep (just go to bed early, it’ll be fine!). 
10. Spend several hours writing. 
11. Go to bed (go to bed). 

"Pedestrians Prohibited"

Of course, the days are broken up by pesky things like attending class and reading books. These distractions are nice, if temporary; I resent the time I spend reading instead of writing, and then spend the time I set aside to be writing reading. I do also eat more than a bagel or toast a day, for concerned parties. I often have the slow cooker making stew, or soup; if not that, I eat with friends (where we inevitably comment on how tiny the restaurant is), or find something else to make for dinner. 

If you just wanted to catch up on life in Edinburgh for an international postgraduate student in her third week of living (and second week of classes), you can leave now. That is as literal a recounting as I can give. 

Writing around the egg

As I’ve finally gotten underway with working on my writing (nearly six thousand words in the past two days!), I’ve found myself encountering a really interesting predicament: the shape of words, sentences, and stories, and my investment therein. After attending a poetry reading on Thursday evening, I was struck by the fact that I tend to write more like a poet than a "typical" prose author. That is to say, my focus is often on how words interact rather with each other rather than the plot structure of a fully-formed narrative. 

This may not make a lot of sense, which is fine, because it doesn’t make much sense to me either. Let me attempt to explain by using a simple example (and hang on, because this may get confusing): 

“I am not in the light, but I am close enough to feel its warmth…” 

(from “Cocktail Hour” by Beth Nugent). 

There is a really delightful symmetry to this line. The repetition of “I am” instates the place of the narrator, framing the story from their perspective. The wordplay of “not” and “close”, where “not” is a definitive “no”, contrasted with the use of “close” as in to be “physically close” rather than to "close the door", is charming. But the really pleasant piece of symmetry in this line is in the words: “light” and “warmth”. 

“Light” is a surprisingly sharp word: front heavy, with a high middle and tall end, it evokes some semblance of etherealness. “Warmth”, by contrast, is rounded and smooth. They mean similar things, but the sharpness of “light” makes it seem distant and cold. “Light” is something to look at, but not to touch – “warmth” is something to obtain. We speak "warmth" roundly, with lenition; "light" is fricative, abrasive. And, beautifully, symmetrically, aesthetically pleasingly, they’re both rounded out by the same “th” ending (albeit in inverse). 

The shape of the words, however, does so much more than simply evoke feeling. It also says a lot about the narrator and therefore shapes how we read the story. 

How much about the narrator do you need to know to understand what this line is trying to convey? How much can you pull away from it without knowing anything else? 

Removing it from any sort of context gives us an interesting chance to really break apart why it works so well both within and without context: “… but I am close enough…” evokes longing, a desire to reach that light that the narrator lacks. Because they aren’t in the light, we can presume they’re looking in on a scene – the scene itself doesn’t matter – and perceive themselves as an outsider. Combined with the desire to “feel [the] warmth…”, they become a full character, with a relatable desire (belonging) and equally relatable fears (being locked out – of a house, of a relationship, of an opportunity). 

What’s incredible about this line is that you don’t need the full story. You can pull a story from a sentence – half of a sentence, even. The shape of the words is pleasing, their symmetry is masterful, and the rise and fall of the letters within the words creates a sense of wavering timidity. 

Of course, I could be reading entirely into this. I do write “fully formed narratives”, with characters and plots and drama. I just find myself channelling the inner poet – analysing every word. For example, why would Nugent choose the word “close” and not “near”? Manipulating the sentence to include “near” makes the second clause far sharper: 

“I am not in the light, but I am near enough to feel its warmth…” 

“Near enough” becomes sharp. Near, like sneer. Longing gives way to pure physicality. The narrator is no longer longing for closeness; they possess nearness. Removing “near” revokes the rounded symmetry of the sentence and gives it an entirely new meaning. 

Am I overthinking this? Absolutely. But I’ve also come to regard writing as similar to an exercise I did my freshman year of high school, in a foundation-level visual arts class. We were tasked with drawing an egg, which seemed doable enough until I was faced with a dark room and a light shining directly on an egg. 

Suddenly, the egg became a hellish beast. I would touch the charcoal to the paper and it would smudge, ruining all of my work. All of my attempts to shade directly on the egg, drawing the outlines, made it appear muddled and out of focus. It wasn’t until I figured out that you draw around the egg to give it form that it began to even resemble something. You draw the darkness around it; you give shape to the void. You can’t draw an egg as an outline, because it lacks dimension; you can’t brute force the egg into existence. You have to coax it, gently, into being.

Admittedly, unlike drawing an egg with charcoal, you can erase words. However, the principle remains the same. If Nugent had tried to brute force that sentence into existence, like my first attempts at drawing the egg, it might have looked something like this: 

“I stand outside the window of my house, staring longingly at my family inside and wishing that they were as perfect in there as they appeared from out here.” 

This is purely speculative – I’m not in any way claiming to know how Nugent may or may not have written. However, two things become immediately obvious with this approach. First, it becomes much longer: fifteen words become twenty-nine, nearly doubling in length. This is because of the second issue, which is context. In losing the shape of the sentence, it becomes a formless beast, rambling and desperate for context. Let’s remove some context, whittling it down further: 

“I stand outside and wish that it was as perfect in there as it appears from out here.” 

And now, the sentence is simply ugly. Eighteen words isn’t bad by any stretch – an addition of three words – and yet it feels far longer. This is because there isn’t any symmetry anymore, either in terms of words (“light” and “warmth”) or repetition (“I am”, “I am”). 

One of my biggest issues is handholding in fiction. How much is too much? How little is too little? This reworked sentence is technically correct, and is fine. It’s just OK. It takes the hand of the reader and leads them, gently, to a conclusion: the narrator expresses their wishes deliberately and takes the reader from Point A to Point B. 

“I am not in the light, but I am close enough to feel its warmth…” 

In the original, there is no direct handholding outside of context. It’s open for interpretation. Nugent shows instead of telling. And that’s the beauty of drawing around the egg: you don’t have to state the thing, you can simply express it. 

That being said, writing paralysis is very real, and fretting over every single word is pretty much impossible. As much as I try to write around the egg, I often find myself resorting to hand holding. Metaphor and allegory are exhausting, symmetry and alliteration are paralysing, and I should be sleeping instead of worrying about whether I put too many avian-related words into my most recent piece of writing.

Loneliness, Time is a Social Construct, and Jim Little

How do you write when writing is the last thing you want to do? Getting words on the page – any words, and in any order – is supposedly a good place to start. I’ve been trying to put my first week in Edinburgh into some semblance of order – structuring social outings, meals, midday naps, and orientation into little modules. That might be the worst possible approach, because while it would be easy to pretend that my week has looked something like this: 

    In reality it has looked (and felt) somewhat like this: 

* I'm hesitant to admit to drinking this much, but it's part of the social experience here in Scotland. Any excuse to go to the pub after about 3:00 PM is both acceptable and expected

Which is simultaneously fun and terrifying. I can’t just “wait for inspiration to strike” anymore. In less than two weeks, I’ll be submitting my first piece for workshop, and I have no words on the page. Not a title, not a single idea. Working on this blog is the next best thing I can think of for getting the creative juices flowing, which isn’t the most promising of beginnings. 

That means that instead of working on the one of the few (desperate and pathetically few) ideas I have rattling around in my skull, I’m going to talk about something else that I’ve been feeling: loneliness. It’s a feeling that I’m not used to experiencing – at least not in this way – and I think it’s an interesting avenue to explore, because it’s terrifying and, apparently, something everyone feels. 

I’m used to being alone. After the isolation from the pandemic, I think that everyone (to some extent) is used to being alone. What I’m not used to is feeling lonely when surrounded by people. This week has been one of the most social weeks of my entire life. I’ve met dozens of people, memorised names, faces, hometowns – not to mention professions, undergraduate degrees, the names of pets, who does and doesn’t have siblings, and a myriad of other information. I’ve met some of the most interesting people in the world – who else would travel to Scotland to pursue a degree in writing? – and yet, when I get back to my flat, I feel empty. I unlace my boots, take a hot shower, make a cup of tea, and I feel lonely. 

The easiest remedy would be to go back out because when I’m moving, I feel fine. When I’m at the pub, or a cafe, or even sitting on a bench trying to soak up the sun like a lizard, I feel fine. But we can’t all live our lives in constant motion; sometimes, we have to be alone. And when I’m alone, the intrusive thoughts come in: 

   

What if you aren’t good enough? What if everyone hates you? Remember Tuesday night, when you were at the pub, and you joked about midwifing goats? What if they think that’s really, extremely super weird? Who the hell says something like that with people they just met? 

Take a deep breath. It’ll be fine. 

I’m surrounded by people who all want to be here, many of whom have travelled long distances to do so. We’re all talented enough to get in to the programme. I was talented enough to get into this programme. We’re all feeling some extent of homesickness, and imposter syndrome, and nobody is really looking at me that closely. I put on my smile, and my public face, and I bundle into my sweaters and scarves and create a façade that I think is interesting. That I desperately hope is interesting. I want to make friends, because the world is full of fascinating people and stories and humans who are wonderful and empathetic. And maybe because when I’m with other people, even if it’s quietly reading in a café or library, I feel like part of something larger. 

Belonging to a pack is human nature, but for the first time in four years, I’m occupying a different role. I’m one of the social ones. I’m going out and doing things. I’m doing my best to initiate plans (or I was, until I came down with the dreaded “freshers’ flu” and put myself into a combination of isolation and bedrest). I’m assimilating to a new pack, finding my niche to occupy, filling the void created by an eight-hour time difference with new people. 

All of this because feeling lonely isn’t the same as being alone. 

Which leads into meeting Jim Little at the Edinburgh Farmers’ Market, because that was the highlight of my week, bar none. 

Jim Little is a soap maker from Caurnie who loves conversation. He apologised profusely to me when I stood in line at his stall; “My wife tells me I talk too much,” he said. “I just like meeting people!” 

I was delighted to humour him and had the pleasure of watching him come alive. For ten minutes, he talked, and I listened. He grew up making soap with his father, pursued a degree in chemistry, and then returned to the family business. He effortlessly carried the conversation, bouncing from asking where I came from to what I was studying to recommending bars of soap. When I asked him the stock question of which soap he thought was his best, he told me it was like asking him to choose a favourite child, joked that it was “whichever [soap] he had the most of!”, and then recommended the “Lime and Thyme”, all in rapid succession. 

It was an incredible experience – his enthusiasm was buoyant, and still almost impossible to describe. Days later, I’m still trying to unravel everything he did and didn’t say. I left with three bars of soap (“Lime and Thyme”, of course, but also a bar of lavender, and one of lemongrass) and a local newspaper, where his soapmaking business had a featurette. He made sure to turn it to the page where the article was located before tucking it into the little paper bag I carried away from the market. I made sure to hang it up on the pinboard above my desk, for a few reasons: 

First and foremost, because it was one of my first “local” experiences, where I felt welcomed into the community. I was at the market early enough that there were few tourists; everyone there was local, either long-time residents of Edinburgh or students brave enough to be awake on the weekend before ten AM. 

Secondly, and maybe more importantly, it’s stuck with me because Jim Little found meaning in making soap. A seventy-something year old man was living his life – his best life – making and selling soap, giving demonstrations, operating booths at farmers’ markets around Scotland, and seemingly waking up every day full of vigour and enthusiasm. I don’t know if soapmaking is his only job; it was certainly all he wanted to talk about, and I loved hearing about it. Regardless, I decided, when I got home, that I wanted that energy in my life. The sort of confidence that comes from knowing a craft, loving a craft, and being willing to share it with the world. 

I guess there’s a lesson in here somewhere, wrapped up in feeling lonely despite being surrounded by people who share my passion for writing, meeting a soap maker who remained enthusiastic for his craft after seventy years of what I might’ve once called monotony, and desperately trying to get words on the page. I’m a writer; it isn’t my place to say what the lesson is, exactly. Only to put the words down and try to convey some sense of meaning. 

Here’s to hoping that next week, I can have something more coherent to say. For now, I’m making my third cup of lemon ginger tea, taking another shot of cough syrup, and heating up my hot water bottles for another day of “tomorrow, definitely tomorrow, I’ll feel better!”

I Hate London Heathrow

Yes, yes he did.

There’s a lot to think about as you’re hurtling in a metal can 37,001 feet above sea level. You think things like: holy shit, I’m traveling at 600 mph 37,001 feet above sea level. And: did that kid just take his shoes and socks off? You realise you’ve been playing (and cheating at) solitaire on your phone for three hours straight, and wonder what your seat mate thinks. You wonder if you can even cheat at solitaire, or if the rules are merely a suggestion – the name of the game, after all, implies that it’s single player, and you aren’t playing for rank or status. Cheating, therefore, is only what you define as cheating. Then, when the woman in front of you downloads solitaire to her seat and begins to play, you wonder if judging her moves makes you a bad person. You wonder if, when the doors to the plane are opened, it’s like opening up any other can, and the pent-up aroma of three hundred people bursts out into the fresh air of the terminal.

Standing alone in the international terminal of London Heathrow Airport, you wonder, briefly, if you’ve made a mistake. All of these are things I couldn’t – and can’t – stop thinking about as I made my way from San Francisco, California to Edinburgh, Scotland. And that was just the first leg of my thirty-hour journey. 

In a strange return to form, the plane had seat-back entertainment. I drank water from glasses made of glass; I was handed a paper menu outlining “dining options” with phrases such as “Starter” and “Mains” and “Dessert” thrown in. I did not indulge in the “seared beef with a red wine demi-glace,” nor did I partake in the “tropical panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis” (which, now that I’m looking at those words in that order, I am regretting deeply.) The flight attendant, in a moment of exasperation, asked “Can I get you anything?” after I turned down politely offered cups of water, juice, and wine. I finally, after some convincing, accepted a small can of ginger ale, at which point she seemed to assume I anticipated plane sickness, or nausea, and offered me a second, third, and fourth can. How could I succinctly tell her that no, my frantic and immediate search through the seat back pocket for the barf bag when I first boarded was not because I felt ill but rather the side effect of a single incident on a plane sixteen years ago, where I had the misfortune of becoming overly anxious and vomiting, like a dog. I, a creature of planning and preparedness, learned my lesson sixteen years ago, and will not go through that again. I simply like knowing where everything is, just in case. Better to let her wonder, anyways, and keep playing solitaire. 

Regardless of cheating at solitaire and feeling physically ill, I find myself in an interesting and exciting endeavour: studying abroad after a hectic bout of indecision. In less than twenty-four hours, I’ll be in “university housing,” half a mile away from the church housing the body of the queen (which I swear I had nothing to do with), adjusting to living abroad for the first time. And all of this having come after barely a month of planning, a terrifyingly close arrival window for my student visa, and several sleepless nights wondering if I would really be able to pull it off. Unlike the familiar location of the “barf bag” in the seat pocket of a commercial airplane, I come into this with less planning than I would like, knowing only a handful of people and with absolutely zero sundresses. 

I want to add something here, something that I believe wholeheartedly to be true: Heathrow is hell. Liberated from rolling luggage and armed only with a spare battery to charge my phone, a backpack to hold the blanket I permanently “borrowed” from British Airways, and a water bottle recently emptied of 32 ounces of water, I got to explore Terminal 5. It didn’t help that I was the opposite of thirsty (infer what you will about that and the water bottle, but I won’t admit to being the laughingstock of several other passengers who may or may not have witnessed me drink all of it in less than a minute). We disembarked the plane on to buses. I acted cool. Yes, cars on the lefthand side of the road. Totally normal. Keep your mouth shut and your head down, act disinterested. Don’t be like the other Americans you see. You belong here. Breathe in the hazy London air. 

Customs seemed innocently quick (despite a brief conversation with a customs agent, who assured me I didn’t need a stamp, while I showed him the letter from the UKVI saying I did, and which ended with him compromising and refusing to give me a stamp), until I reached security. And then I discovered the horrors of security in the international terminal of Heathrow. At least I was at the front of the line. Escaping out from the gate into the terminal at large felt like being liberated, until I realised: I was even more stuck. It was like letting the giraffes out of the barn at the zoo. I was suddenly free to explore what felt like a very large space. Maybe giraffe is a generous description; I’m barely five-foot-four. It was more like releasing a bear. I lumbered to one end of the terminal, as un-thirsty as I have ever been yet looking for a water bottle filler. I stopped, watched the planes, and walked back across the terminal, finding nowhere to fill my water bottle. I perused the row of high-end shops: Chanel, Hermes, Burberry. I was surrounded by people and their people smell, which competed with the perfumes and sanitisers utilised by the army of hand sanitising kiosks set out for travellers to “use at their leisure.” I briefly stopped by the “Quiet Area,” which was tranquil. I considered returning there, but it was small and I only found space on the floor. 

Heathrow "Quiet Area"

But, much like the humble zoo bear, I soon discovered the truth: Terminal 5 isn’t that large. I paced up and down the terminal thrice before finding water. Terminal 5 is crowded at noon. Terminal 5 has practically no outlets. Terminal 5 wanted to chew me up and spit me out. I did not let Terminal 5 win, because I've braved Chicago O’Hare. I’ve braved the mile-long terminals of Miami-Dade. I’ve braved a terrifying sequestering room in Ecuador, where at least we were served refreshments while our fates were decided. 

Heathrow was hell, but I adjusted. I grew as a person, becoming stronger and better than I was. Heathrow became almost like a home. Who am I kidding, my ass was sore from sitting on that hard seat and I got really good at ignoring the passive aggressive looks of travellers envious of my quiet seat at an airport cafe. 

Of Edinburgh, what can I say? It was dark when I arrived, and raining, and the woman in front of me waiting for a cab had a mental breakdown while the rest of us watched on – her traveling companion included. I’ve only seen the city in light for about an hour, but I’ve spent that hour glued to my window, taking it in. My home city for the next year. I don’t know how you’re supposed to feel when you move to a new country. If I’m being honest, I don’t feel much of anything yet. I can hardly believe that, with little more than forty days of planning, I did this. I’m alone in a city I’ve never been to, about to start a program of study that I’m passionate about, with little more than a handful of people I know by name and not face.

 I did this. 

So, here I am, preparing for life as a full-time writer, because when I went through with getting on the plane to Edinburgh, I decided that for the next year, that’s what I would be. (And I’m lucky enough to be able to pursue it full-time). I turned down a job offer as a winemaking intern; I left work on a California weed farm; I didn’t say goodbye to my cat (which is really on him for being asleep at noon). Instead, I enrolled in a master’s program for creative writing. 

I’ve been in Edinburgh for less than twelve hours and already own a bottle of gin (house made at the hotel and traded to me in exchange for two vouchers after I made sufficiently sad eyes and looked like someone who’d just been traveling for thirty hours). I took a cab for the first time, all on my own. I’ve been staring at Edinburgh Castle for an entire hour. Time will tell if it was the right call, but with the number of pub meet-ups I have planned for the next week, I can only hope that I’ll be able to type coherent sentences when the start of the semester rolls around. 

I’ll be writing weekly – and likely more often than that – because I came here to write, and I’ll be damned if I don’t do just that. Sometimes, I’ll even hold myself to telling true stories. Sometimes, just sometimes, I may edit what I write. Plus, it’s hard to complain about much when you’re sitting on the windowsill of your hotel and the view looks like this: