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. 

Between the lines is a different story. I pace the confines of my room when I’m home, desperate to escape. The walls close in, so I open the windows – all four inches that they’ll tilt – and I spin in my chair and I feel like I’m stuck in place. I look over lines that I’ve written and wonder if they’re too obvious, or not obvious enough. How many bird allusions in a story is too many? Is there such a limit? 

Is it clear that I’m losing my mind? 

I’ve been writing thousands of words a day for the past week, and I’m struggling, in many ways, to understand where the line between fiction and reality really lies. Twenty, thirty, forty thousand words: how far can you push the envelope, without losing the reader? When is fiction fantasy, and vice versa? What I say and what I mean are often at odds; if you’re reading this, you should question how much is truth and how much is fiction (although I’ll willingly admit that the prior list is, roughly, my daily routine, and also that I've over-exaggerated the time spent drinking, when we've just as often simply gotten coffee and discussed convoluted plots, family lives, and whether or not the breakfast we just received is what we really ordered). 

I’m creating and inhabiting worlds outside of our own and the words pour out of me. I’ve been told my typing is “soothing”, although I can’t help but feel that it’s distracting when I’m sitting in a quiet room. I’m used to using a mechanical keyboard, so I type with force and finality, even when words have lost their meaning. I drum my fingers agains the keys without committing words to the page and struggle to understand how humans of all creatures adopted a symbolic language. 

 

Now, I write anything, anywhere: notes on my phone, sentences scribbled in a notebook, in the margins of a piece I’m workshopping for my peers, on a scrap of paper. I’m frantically conveying meaning, tying together ideas with “ands”, “ors”, “buts”. I read my work under my breath at night, sounding half-crazed as I repeat phrases, rearrange words, scribble over sentences that aren’t working, and try again. 

I walk to campus every day between buildings that are hundreds of years old and it makes me feel small. I’ve taken to snapping a photo of Arthur’s Seat on my return walks, when I pass Richmond Place, because the lighting is strange and fascinating. Subtly, I’ve switched from feeling like a tourist to feeling like I belong here. I don’t use my phone to navigate to Potterow, or McEwan, or the Meadows anymore. That doesn’t mean I can’t take in the sights as if I’ve never seen them. 

Sometimes, I’m the only one looking up, rather than down at my phone, and I feel lonely all over again. It’s fine, because I have the spectres of Edinburgh to keep me company: the worn cobblestones, the chinks in the walls, the pervasive chill that could be the wind, or could be the ghosts that come from thousands of years of continuous human settlement. The whole city creaks and groans, but it’s comforting, if not cold. 

The other day, at a poetry reading, I was drawn to Arthur’s Seat. All day, nearly every day of the year, tourists and locals hike to the top for an unrivalled view of Edinburgh. They stand at the peak, where it must feel like standing at the top of the world. I can imagine the brisk wind, the view of the city sprawled out beneath them, the feeling of soaring triumph that comes from occupying such a commanding position. 

I wasn’t thinking of any of that, though. I had noticed a single figure, standing right at the edge. Their coat was puffed out from the wind, their arms were slightly outstretched, as if they wanted to be carried away. They were tiny against the sky, ant-like, insignificant from where I sat, picking at a tag on my scarf. As the poet read her work, and the rest of the writing cohort stared unseeingly in her direction, I watched the figure spinning, spinning, spinning…