All I wanted was a real person; I already know, automated message, that your answers wouldn’t be answers to me. Today could’ve been better. I found out my visa will be much more dicey to obtain than I thought. I spent hours being routed and re-routed on embassy and consulate web sites, calling numbers with an automated directory. Embassies refuse to have the “press 0 to speak to an operator” option. Losers. But, today could’ve been worse, and it wasn’t. We are happy in everyday life, and we no…
We woke up to a sound like someone wheeling a suitcase up our path. Rain, again. Everything in this town seems never-ending. One of the magnetizing aspects of Scotland is that it is long-standing, stalwart. Change of the place is rare, if not the streams of students and tourists. At the end of the town, a castle and a cathedral have remained for nearly 800 years, landmarks of the tensions and victories and momentousness of this town. All this oldness is good for fast-paced me; this resistance…
It’s been over a year since I lived here, and I feel strangely anonymous. I don’t see a familiar face every time I'm out walking, and about a quarter of the shops were not here when I was last. Instead of new, most things are vaguely familiar. When I walk into a store, no one smiles in faint, or familiar, recognition. One day, I will be friends with the new cheese-monger, but not yet. The good news is that I notice more, again. I have to think before crossing the roads, and I look around so…
In the past two weeks, Walker and I have flown through magenta and blue sunset stripes, over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and through 11 time zones. We’ve walked through streamers and cheers and bells all the way to cobbled streets and damp dreariness. When we left New York a week ago, the air was turning that perfect coolness, and everything was breathing deeply and contentedly. Who'd want to leave that? We came to Scotland, and the past week has been devoted to clearing out, cleaning up,…