Embracing an unusually light week of coursework, I backpacked from Dundee to Edinburgh to Glasgow and back on a journey from February 4th-8th.
Some aspects of my trip were constant: I wore the same pants, jacket, and shoes every day (even on Day 3’s run along the river). I actively recorded my thoughts in a journal. I read the section “A GOOD LIFE” from Garrison Keillor’s anthology Good Poems (a graduation present from my remarkably supportive mentor and teacher, Ed Nolan) daily.
Most moments were charged with entropy: I met a 35 year-old Scottish Engineer named Andrew on my train ride back to Dundee. Meeting a 49er’s fan in a candy shop in Edinburgh. My roommate got arrested on my first night in Glasgow.
I did my best to wrap up each day’s adventure and will be posting one blog each day beginning Monday February 10th. Cheers!
"…they will find that madness
is caused by not
being often enough
alone”
- the way it is now by Charles Bukowski
“…I settle into my other years, I notice how many of what I once
thought were evidences of repression,
Sexual or otherwise, now seem, in other people anyway, to be
varieties of dignity, withholding, tact…”
- Repression by C.K. Williams
For the first time since October, I woke up to the sun beating down my face. From that moment on, the day was mine.
Inspired by more proficient travelers, I woke up with a few check-list items for the day. I had pasta with hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, then finished up some group work for school.
I planned my route for the day between extra bites of dry noodles. Glasgow is spread out so I had lots of walking to do between stops. I downloaded 5 podcasts while still on hostel Wi-Fi, then got moving.
I picked up a sumo orange on my way to the Kelvingrove Museum. They had relics, art, and free admission but the man practicing on the pipe organ stole my attention. I ate my orange while taking in the beautiful music dancing around the glamorous auditorium—content.
I walked to the Botanic Gardens quite sure of my navigation skills. One mile later I checked my trace against the map and had to turn around. I killed an hour, but I wasn’t worried—just happily distracted.
The gardens stretch over many acres of a soft-sloping hill with a greenhouse sitting atop.
There were multiple climate-controlled rooms in the greenhouse which enabled the widest array of beautiful plants to grow happily, even in the dense cold of this Scottish February.
I listened to a podcast about gardening while exploring the Greenhouse, then stepped back outside to read some poetry and watch the sunset. I read the 20 poems of “A GOOD LIFE” out-loud from a park bench. Unlike yesterday, my orations attracted no one. I was alone. And for once, alone felt right.
I couldn’t help but notice a young women wearing a University of Massachusetts, Amherst sweatshirt on my way out of the gardens. Confident and sincere in my desire to meet a new person, I politely got her attention and we had a nice conversation about Massachusetts and the sunny day. I don’t recall her name, but it felt good to know that I had one thing in common with one person in the city.
I was welcomed back to the hostel by my new roommates and my Greek friend from yesterday. I met an Australian couple that had just moved to the UK on a two-year visa looking for a career break; a young man who was born in Scotland and raised in Australia, he had just moved back and is amidst the college application process; a Canadian from Toronto who is teaching English to adults in Paris; and a young Taiwanese man taking a gap year to assist marginalized individuals in Northern Ireland.
They were an odd bunch, and I fit right in.
But I didn’t blend. I stepped outside for a break when I had heard enough from the other American roommate. I acknowledged my ignorance on topics like Australian geography and Brexit. I acknowledged passive misogynistic remarks. I stated my opinions with confidence and did not lace them with apologies.
I shared the most honest version of myself with these new people, and they found me as interesting as I found them.
Thank you, Glasgow, for teaching me that independence is a potent inhibitor to loneliness.
