Archive for June, 2019

Mired

Posted in Scotland, The Blog with tags on June 30, 2019 by chateaucone

I am so deeply in the muck right now with this essay I’m writing about Scotland that I may never get out.

I’ve somehow managed to cram all of these pieces into it so far:

Edmund Husserl
Joseph Beuys
John Locke
Ley lines
Ian Rankin and the John Rebus series (which, at least are set in Edinburgh)
The Phenomenology course I took in undergrad
Assorted Scottish legends and myths, probably slightly mis-told
Clava Cairns
Energy dowsing
Meikle Seggie (I’m still trying to figure out exactly what this is)
Richard DeMarco and the The Road to Meikle Seggie(which may be both physical and spiritual?)
Madeleine L’Engle (natch)
Poststructural thinking on the self/subjectivity (Let the dissertation go already, Elizabeth!)
The construction of caskets
Narnia, specifically The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Roland Barthes
A timeline of the kilt
King George IV
Beuys’ first sculpture teacher in Dusseldorf
Oedipus (briefly)
American churches vs Scottish churches

(Aren’t you dying to read it now?)

I have fallen down the rabbit hole. (And yet not mentioned Alice anywhere in this piece. Which is weird. Alice is one of my go-to references.)

I no longer know what the piece is about. And I’m not sure I can identify the latest draft among the dozens I have saved.

There is just too much. And as if all of this is not enough, I am compelled—compelled!—to go the Scottish Storytelling Center today to see what they have (and not just because there’s a really cute teashop across the street). AND  I’ve requested four more books from the National Library. (Which is, incidentally, across the street from the Elephant House, where JK Rawling allegedly wrote some of Harry Potter—and while this has not been confirmed, it has certainly been capitalized upon. Ian McEwan is rumored to do some writing there as well, but he doesn’t have the same sort of fan base Rawling does.)

(The National Library of Scotland General Reading Room is cool because it’s full of very serious people reading very serious, very old books. You’re not allowed to bring anything in that’s larger than a laptop, you can only use pencil, no pens, and . . .a whole bunch of other rules I’m forgetting. (Sadly there are no sparkling clean white cotton gloves.) You learn all of this from the lecture you get from the guy who takes your picture and then makes your library card, while he keeps gesturing as though he’s about to hand you the card and you keep reaching for it, and then he keeps talking, and it’s all rather awkward. But hell, I’m practically in the Bodleian reading Ashmole 782! Which I’ve also mentioned in this essay.

I didn’t get to do this kind of research for my dissertation, because it was all about relatively new narrative research methods and theories. I did talk about the occasional really old text, like Augustine’s Confessions,but there was really no need for me to hunt down an original manuscript with, like, Augustine’s personal notes in it. (This is rather a long parenthetical thought.))

And then there’s Rosslyn Chapel, which I’ve been to three or four times, but I feel like I need to revisit. (See “ley lines” above. And “energy dowsing.” Oh, and cool legends about the Knights Templar being buried there. I wonder if I can work them in too.)

I heard Nan Talese, Pat Conroy’s editor at Knopf/Doubleday, speak years ago and she told a story about editing Conroy’s books. She said he wrote his novels in bits and pieces and essentially sent her a box of scraps which she then shaped into a novel. I wonder if she is available. (Incidentally, she edits Ian McEwan too. I wonder if she hangs out at the Elephant House.)

As fun and cool and even logical as it sounds to write an essay about Scotland in Scotland, it is way overwhelming.

And I have maybe fallen out the composing process and into the procrastination process. Such a thin line.

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Cutest street in North Berwick

 

 

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Embarrassing Bodies, Monsters, Time Travel and Other Adventures in Scotland

Posted in Scotland, The Blog with tags , on June 23, 2019 by chateaucone

So, Embarrassing Bodies. From which I assume that the British version of the FCC does not frown upon nudity, no matter the gender, or the close-up.

I’m flipping through the channels the other night, here in Scotland, because I have no idea what is on where, or even what channels this tv has. Or even what time shows start, because in UK, one cannot assume that a show starts on the hour, or the half hour. Some shows start at, say, 6:55, or 8:20. Anyway. As I’m flipping, “Antiques Road Trip,” not to be confused with “Antiques Roadshow,” is ending and something called “Embarrassing Bodies” is beginning. Could you resist? No. You could not. Even if you’re being all high-minded right now and pretending you could.

“Embarrassing Bodies” has a great concept. These two doctors roam around Britian, and set up clinics where people can come if they have anything weird going on. And then most of them are assured whatever is going on is perfectly normal and not life-threatening, or, at the very least, treatable. The message is, “All of our bodies are pretty weird. It’s normal.” I get it, and I probably would have appreciated it when I was doing the whole puberty thing and everything about my body felt weird. Hell, I appreciate it now. (Weird things continue to happen in your 50s. But that’s another post.)

And it’s all filmed. Which really calls the whole “embarrassing” thing into question. I mean, if you’ve got something seriously peculiar going on, that embarrasses you, would you agree to have your whole appointment, and your embarrassing body part examined, on film? But whatever. When I say “it’s all filmed,” I mean, it’s all filmed. Not only all kinds of private parts, penises and va-jay-jays, and other…orifices…but privates that are experiencing something odd, like extra parts, or extra holes, or cysts or tumors, or stuff that is supposed to remain inside coming out. All right there on the giant television in my Airbnb. Close up. Zoomed in. We are not a pretty species close up.

Anyway, still in Scotland, but we braved the Highlands this weekend. And two things did not happen while we were there:

  1. We did not see Nessie.
  2. When I flung myself at the standing stone at Clava Cairns, I did not go back in time 200 years. (Obs. I mean, here I am writing a blog post. Which I could not do in, say, 1819. I mean, I could write it, but what would I do with it?)

So, Outlanderand the Loch Ness Monster be damned.

But! But but but. We took a tour with the most awesome guides, Dave and Susie from Inverness Tours. They took us all over the Highlands, to Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle and a cool pub for lunch, and Dave told us all the good stories—history, myth and legend—about the Picts, the Druids, the Celts, the Scots and the Clans. There were MacDonalds and Frasers and Grants and cattle stealing and dirks and mysterious markings on stones and  St. Columba and those damn Redcoats and horrible slaughters in battle and pagans. Pagans are my favorite.

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Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness

Of course the stories were the best part. But the second best part was Clava Cairns.

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Dave with my cousin Rob

At Clava Cairns, we saw burial cairns and stone circles that are 1500 years older than Stonehenge, and that were created by the Druids. Dave and Susie taught us how to use dowsing rods to locate energy and ley lines in the stones and in the ground. It was magical—literally and figuratively, and when those dowsing rods moved in my hands, I totally got the shivers. Dave told us how one cairn was lined up precisely with the sun on the Winter Solstice, so that the sun created a path of light directly to the center of it. As the sun set, the path would be crossed over slowly by the shadow of the largest standing stone, opening and closing the connection between the physical and the spiritual worlds. (I’m sure I’ve got some details wrong here but you get the idea.)

Who wants to come back with me on December 21?

And now we return to the terrible and the mundane. Here’s Mitch McConnell at the Royal Highland Show. I know the traditional representation of McConnell is a turtle, but look at this sheep. McConnell as a sheep. So many layers.

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P.S. Lichens and moss. You can’t see enough lichens and moss.

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Hail, Caledonia!

Posted in Scotland, The Blog with tags on June 14, 2019 by chateaucone

Welcome to Sabbatical 3, c. 2019. More important, welcome to the revival of the blog. (Apparently, I only blog on sabbatical.)

Sabbatical 2, c. 2012, otherwise known as the Dissertation/Greenport Sabbatical, was pretty well documented right here, and so the blog became part of the “scholarly project” of the sabbatical. Clever, no?

Sabbatical 1, c. 2005-06, the glorious European sabbatical, spanned two semesters. (There is something to be said for owning only enough stuff that you can put it all in storage for a mere $100 a month, and then live on half your salary, for the next 12 months. And then live with your mother for another two months while you wait to close on your new co-op, purchased, wisely, at the end of a full year at half-pay, and seconds, mere seconds! before the bottom fell out of the market. Hey, what’s $70,000, give or take? Who needs equity? But this is not the blog for financial…well, for anything financial. In fact, sabbaticals, for me, always precede 7 years of famine, during which I pay for said sabbatical. Literally. Figuratively. Really just literally. Hopefully not figuratively. Geez. Where was I?)

Right. Sabbatical 3. I am considering all of the summer of 2019 as part of my sabbatical, mostly because the specter of Paying-Back-The-Money-If-I-Don’t-Do-The-Work makes me start the work technically early. (See Sabbatical 2, wherein I wrote 100 pages in August. August!)

(Note: At least a few of my colleagues, who submitted amazing sabbatical proposals, were denied last year, and that is seriously unfair. And short-sighted on the part of the SCCC administration. Was this one of those money-saving things where we’re not allowed to buy any more pens but you can hire yet another Vice President of Something-to-Do-With-Assessment? Hmmm. It costs $25,000 to send a faculty member on sabbatical, roughly. Four or five classes taught by adjuncts who make very little money and get no benefits. And the benefit to the college? Textbooks, novels, collections of poetry and essays and short stories written and published, articles placed in refereed journals, research conducted, breakthroughs made, dissertations completed and defended, doctorates earned. Epiphanies! Faculty building their credentials in their fields. Major bragging rights for the college. Informed, active faculty members sharing their knowledge and experience with our students. You get it.)

Back to Sabbatical 3. I’m going to call this the Scottish/Canadian sabbatical. One of my cousins was under the impression that you have to travel on sabbatical. My fault. It turns out, I’m not very good at writing at my own desk, in the midst of my own life. During regular semesters I try to hide out in coffee shops or the library—anything to get me out of the house and out of the office—and write. But when I can go away, I’m gone. There is just so much brain-filling (Is that a thing?) when you travel. Even if you’re blocked on whatever piece is on top of your too-hard pile, there’s new stuff to write about. Museums unblock me. Concerts too. I have an embarrassing collection of programs from the weekly Sunday evening concerts at St. Giles in Edinburgh in 2005 and 2006, covered in notes for pieces I was writing. Whatever I was stuck on came unstuck listening to music I know nothing about, and sometimes don’t even enjoy. (Mostly I enjoyed it.)

I’ve been in the UK for a week now. I spent a few days in London (well documented on Insta), a day in Oxford (two-hour walking tour in the pouring rain, but still cool—I mean, the Bodleian) and now I’m in Edinburgh. Well, North Berwick.

North Berwick is this beautiful little seaside town that is a quick train ride to Waverley Station in the middle of Edinburgh. Hoping on the train most mornings makes me feel like a commuter. Like a real-life Scottish person.

And on the walk home from the train station, I stop and look at all the real estate listings in the window of the real estate office.

At the end of my month in Scotland, I’m going to Ireland, partly for a writing retreat, but also to see the Giants Causeway, because I’ve been looking at a poster of Joseph Beuys at the Giants Causeway over my desk since sometime in college. More on Beuys later.

In fact, more on everything later. It’s late. The sun stays out here forever (seriously, it’s 9:45 pm, and still light out) and I therefore have no idea what time it is, ever. (Add to that this whole military time thing. I shouldn’t have to do math to know what time it is. And now, I’ve put my phone on military time, and time has lost all meaning.) All of a sudden it’s midnight, or, zero, as my phone says, and I think it’s only 8 pm. But the views…long sunsets over the Firth of Forth. Amazing. I am so retiring here. (The math will keep my mind sharp when I’m old.) And I am so running down to the beach right now to watch the rest of the sunset. At nearly 10 pm. Crazy. Photos to follow. (Did I mention the sun comes up at about 3:30 am? Blackout shades. Best thing ever.)

Oh, and I’m writing! A lot! Yay! (And that’s my personal allotment of exclamation points.)

Next time: The strange and bizarre British phenomenon that is Embarrassing Bodies. I’ll leave that to your imagination for a little bit.

 

 

 

 

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