Edinburgher
I'm taking a major internet detox while i'm over here. I don't have net access in my room--the building's only got Ethernet and my iPad only does wifi. I wind up getting online for a half hour each morning before class, checking in on my email and shooting a random Facebook non sequitur or blog entry off into the ether. I left my phone in the US, too, and don't intend to get a UK one.
How can you stand it, people keep asking me.
It's incredibly calm, actually. It forces me to think in a more linear fashion, to save up things i need to research or look up, to do that business all in a stretch, like grocery shopping for information instead of calling the yammering delphic crowd to attention whenever an idle query pops to mind. I will have to find a plan for maintaining this level of detachment when i'm back home, too. Connectivity is a brain drain.
Two, nearly three days without rain. Scotland in sunshine is beautiful. I have a few classmates determined to be miserable here, but you know, you really do reap what you sow, and if you look for the fantastic in this country, the only way you won't find it is if your soul is dead. Edinburgh is very literally a magical land--just the other day one of the folks from UNESCO was talking about how Victoria Street was the model for Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter books, and the levels and layers of the Old Town have informed the creation of so many archetypical fantasy cities.
Two word-snapshots from the past few days: My neighbors hav a cactus that looks like a bouquet of thumbs. Boys on bicycles by the canal, shouting about a cute girl as they fly past, "Och, she Luke's like a vampire! Hoot!"
Today i took a new route to the cafe up the marvellously named Spylaw Road. Here are the shots of things i saw, plus a few of the National Library, where they now recognize me by sight.
wee stone-stair garden
Servants' entrance in one of the manses
Front walk up to the same manse, with the old wood shutters visible in the window
Cool stone house in disrepair
Stone wall around the same house
Lovely rooves beneath a Scottish sky
Wonder what lies behind this gate? Maybe a secret garden...
Reading room of the National Library of Scotland, where I spend my days off writing.
This is what writer's block looks like.
How can you stand it, people keep asking me.
It's incredibly calm, actually. It forces me to think in a more linear fashion, to save up things i need to research or look up, to do that business all in a stretch, like grocery shopping for information instead of calling the yammering delphic crowd to attention whenever an idle query pops to mind. I will have to find a plan for maintaining this level of detachment when i'm back home, too. Connectivity is a brain drain.
Two, nearly three days without rain. Scotland in sunshine is beautiful. I have a few classmates determined to be miserable here, but you know, you really do reap what you sow, and if you look for the fantastic in this country, the only way you won't find it is if your soul is dead. Edinburgh is very literally a magical land--just the other day one of the folks from UNESCO was talking about how Victoria Street was the model for Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter books, and the levels and layers of the Old Town have informed the creation of so many archetypical fantasy cities.
Two word-snapshots from the past few days: My neighbors hav a cactus that looks like a bouquet of thumbs. Boys on bicycles by the canal, shouting about a cute girl as they fly past, "Och, she Luke's like a vampire! Hoot!"
Today i took a new route to the cafe up the marvellously named Spylaw Road. Here are the shots of things i saw, plus a few of the National Library, where they now recognize me by sight.
wee stone-stair garden
Servants' entrance in one of the manses
Front walk up to the same manse, with the old wood shutters visible in the window
Cool stone house in disrepair
Stone wall around the same house
Lovely rooves beneath a Scottish sky
Wonder what lies behind this gate? Maybe a secret garden...
Reading room of the National Library of Scotland, where I spend my days off writing.
This is what writer's block looks like.
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