Spring in Mind

I would like to share with you some photographs and a song.

Across three months earlier this year, I found myself in several cities, and I enjoyed watching spring unfurl in each of them. I captured my mother’s crocuses and magnolias, and red buds and birches in New York. Cherry blossoms bloomed in Edinburgh and I wandered the sunny streets of London.

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Autumn Light

When I was very young, one of my favorite books was I Like to be Little by Charlotte Zolotow.  In the story, a girl regales her mother with all the reasons it is far better to be a child than a grown-up.  She may jump in the leaves when they fall about the trees, and she may sit underneath the dining room table, tracing her finger across the rose-patterned rug as she dreams up worlds all her own.

These images have been floating through my mind for the past few weeks, as I've glided through the Meadows on my bike, my eyes lingering on the coppery, sun-drenched leaves, wishing I could rake them up and leap into them as I used to. This week as I was riding through, a small boy bounded into the piles a man swept up, jumping before they reached any height, bouncing with energy, too eager to wait. He ran into a small pile, half-raked, and collided with the man's leg, wrapping his small arms around and hugging, grinning. I smiled, too. Memories of leaf collection days rushed back, when my father swept the layers of crisp colors up from the grass, mounding them into piles three or four feet high, stretching thirty of forty feet from one end of the yard to the other.

On Wednesday, as I checked the news, I discovered that Ms. Zolotow had died on Tuesday. She was ninety-eight, and she was a very established children's book editor as well as an author, and apparently she was known for delving into topics deemed unsuitable for children. My favorite discovery in this beautifully written obituary, is a quote from Zolotow. She once wrote, "We are all the same, except that adults have found ways to buffer themselves against the full-blown intensity of a child’s emotions. We are not different from the children we were — only more experienced, better able to disguise our feelings from others, if not ourselves.”

Pack Rat

I cleaned out my room.

It's not empty, no. I'm not that far yet in the moving out process. I have simply discovered that a beautiful procrastination technique is cleaning and organizing, because then there is at least something to show for the time you have, apparently, wasted.

Now, when I sit bent over my desk plastered with notes and handouts and notebooks, I watch people plodding over to their parents' cars, drooping under backpacks, pillows, duvets, boxes and plastic bags stuffed to bursting. Just yesterday, Thursday, I had to force myself to comprehend the idea of two weeks. Then it'll be me hauling whatever I can squeeze into one suitcase, a backpack, a pillow and a messenger bag. I have two weeks left in Edinburgh. I think, no! There's so much more to do! I haven't read the books I meant to finish, or explored the museums I haven't even seen the reception desks of; I haven't seen some of my friends since before spring break!

Well, after exams are over (TOMORROW I WILL BE DONE!) I hope my evenings are going to be spent attending all of those "birthday/end of exams" parties that have sprung up on facebook. I do hope that the rain clears up a bit. Although it's reassuring to know that the sun isn't shining while you're rereading far too many powerpoint slides, it's not fun to walk to the gym in the rain. It is also not fun to go to an exam in the rain, and realize, when it's time to leave, that your coat and bag, crumpled by a back wall in the exam hall, are just as wet as when you came in. But I am proud of you, clouds of Edinburgh, for actually raining, not misting or producing dampness and humidity, but actually raining.

Anyways, I'm sorry you've had to endure that bit of complaining. It's not a thrilling post, I am well aware. It's just that, today, I found myself picking through piles of receipts, ticket stubs, programs, letters, lists, pamphlets, flyers, etc., and stuffing at least fifty or eighty plastic bags into a larger plastic bag. Now, I know the first observation is one of a typical pack rat, which I am. I love saving those little papers that, when I find them days, months, or years later, I smile at and lay in a box safe for keeping. Of course, sometimes I find things that have lost their meaning, and those fly straight into the garbage, or, if I remember, into the paper recycling.

But back to the bags. They're not for sentimental value. No, I do not smile when I come across an old, torn Tesco bag. I save them to put my climbing gear in, or to replace the garbage bag in my mini wastebasket. Bags have been folded, stacked and stuffed into corners of the houses I have known.

Back home, we have a stack of brown bags, and a separate doorknob for those nifty, cloth, reusable shopping bags. Our coat rack in the kitchen plays host to tote bags, lunch boxes and backpacks, and a jacket or two may reside there. But really, the jackets belong on the vestibule coat rack. The plastic bags used to gather in our beach bag, but now have been introduced to a giant trash bag of their own, so they aren't evicted each time we need to pack up towels, sunscreen and sunglasses. Before long, I started a plastic bag collection of my own, stuffing a wicker basket on my closet shelf full, until I got fed up, and began folding them.

My grandparents prided themselves on their crisply folded translucent plastic bags destined to protect cheese from the fridge and transport sandwiches from kitchen to picnic.

I remember my horror when, I'm not sure where anymore, I saw someone let their possibly practical plastic bags go to waste away in the trash can. Well, I shall never let that happen. I cleared out the bags under my bed, and could not bear to bring them to the green can in the pantry marked "All other waste". They wouldn't even get their own bag! They now sit, happily scrunched together in a clear plastic bag under my desk, waiting to be useful.

P.S. I wrote this on Friday, the day before my last exam for first year. Now, I can say that I am finished. Oh- and a new, hot pink Superdrug (toiletries shop) bag has been added to my collection.

A Post Long Overdue: Up, Up, and away!

I would like to thank whoever it was that invented the train. I cannot imagine a better way to travel through Scotland. The first few hours out of Glasgow passed by beautifully, but now, it's absolutely magnificent. I almost feel as if I should shove my notebook back into my backpack to stare at the landscape that has swallowed us up.

The sun gleams every now and then from behind the misty clouds that hover just above the horizon, almost brushing the peaks powdered with snow. The hills glide down, with tufts of brown grass peeking out. Snow begins to fall, but I'm safe behind glass and steel, under my new hat and my thick-knit sweater. Suddenly, the song "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm" trumpets out of my headphones. I smile.

At one of the last stops before Fort William, when a station consists of small wooden buildings huddled together, we are told to step out to use the bathroom. The conductor assures us, her words curling under her Scottish brogue and her smile disrupted by missing teeth, that the train will not leave without us. I think of times when trains waited an extra moment for a gasping traveler to hurdle in through the doors. We stumble out of our seats, backpack straps tripping us up, and as soon as we emerge, I stick my tongue out to welcome the snow. My first snow in Scotland. My friends laugh and wish for their cameras and I stand admiring the stillness, the quiet that comes with falling snow.
The train does wait.

 Lochs stretch alongside the mountains, their surfaces rippling and opaque, while the streams that sink below the tufted hills shimmer for a few moments before sinking away again. And those mountains rising above are cracked and creased with creeks and ruts running down with bare trunks and branches  folded into them. Firs and birches and conifers flash past, a nuisance when we try to capture the view. And the forests look so soft, with trees grown so close together their tops repeat jagged, green patterns.

After four or five hours, we step off the train and into Fort William. First, we'll get groceries and then we'll head off to the Ben Nevis Inn, at least a mile out of town. But that will all come later.

Thank you, Mr. Sendak

When I open my bedroom door at home, books confront me. A bookcase stretching upwards to the ceiling creates a square halo of spines. The shelf at about shoulder height houses a small pile of miniature books: The Nutshell Library. They are fawn brown with light hardcovers wrapped in fabric that open to reveal characters that take control of their pages and the other characters on them.

I haven't posted here in a while, and I can excuse myself by muttering about exams and essays and Easter holidays, but today I'd like to thank Mr. Maurice Sendak. As I sit here writing, and listening to the Tammy Grimes narrated versions of his stories, Sendak's drawings burst open in my mind. I can see the tiger in One Was Johnny and the trees that transformed Max's bedroom.
There are many children's books, but not all of the stories, not all of the authors, have the power to light up our imaginations. Maurice Sendak always did. Stories that grab our minds and hearts as children are beautiful gifts; because when you return to your childhood home or a box of books at the back of a closet somewhere, it's like finding your supper still warm on the table, when you have been gone so long. Those memories are still crisp and colorful, waiting on the page to grab you once more.

There is no frigate like a book

A week or so ago, I found myself with time on my hands, so I browsed the stacks at the library for a not-so-tattered copy of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. When looking through a copy at a bookstore, I had thought of my mother and her room at the back of our house where she often writes her poetry. She always closes the door, against disruption, against distraction, and against cats. Whenever I venture in for paper, or her laptop, it feels as if I've entered another place, another world: one of her creation. The entire right-hand wall as you enter is lined with books, a few trinkets balanced between. One shelf pays homage to the Day of the Dead, with little skeletons lying about, painted and papery. Several real skulls perch around the room as well. More books and manuscripts and boxes of music are stacked around the floor, sometimes leaving only a narrow path, or maybe a few far-apart foot holes, to her two desks.
Now, maybe I shouldn't be giving away this description of the poet's den. After all, it is so secret that even most of her closest friends have never seen it. Our dear, late friend Mardi mused once that there must have been beautiful hanging gardens thriving in her study to rival those in Babylon. But the most wonderful thing about that room, for me, is the light and the smell. The scent of old books mingles with the cane she carves to make her reeds, and that aroma will only ever exist pocketed away in my home. And the light. In morning and early afternoon, the light fades through the window, and seems to waft through the air like dust, never settling, never staying. I hope I can find a room of my own one day, a room like that, where all you need to do is allow inspiration to seep in while you inspect the skulls and brush your finger over the moss garden and gaze at the painted skeletons with bright flowers adorning their heads, and maybe even pose the Mozart action figure.
Without books, though, the room would seem empty.  I have inherited my mother's love of books, and it prods me into almost every bookshop I pass, where I will undoubtedly want to add to my small, but growing, collection. All additions, when well thought out, are rewarding. Today I opened my collection of Tennyson to rediscover a few browned flower petals pressed between the pages. I smiled, thinking of the last owner who must have left them there, and stroked the browning pages curling at the edges. Unfortunately, at university most of my reading tends to be attached to my courses, which do usually supply good articles and books, but I want to be able to read whatever strikes my fancy. So today, I have decided to take a leaf from a friend's book: she makes reading schedules! I haven't added dates to mine yet, but hopefully it will encourage me to read, so I may tick off the chapters and sections as I've read them.
Just today I acquired a new textual treasure, but it's something I don't need to finish or schedule. On my way back from my first lecture, I (not so subconsciously) took a route past my favorite bookshop, hoping it would be open. As the green shopfront peeked out from behind a corner, I saw the outer door had been pushed back to reveal an 'open' sign hanging inside the glass door.
For the past week or so I had been looking around for Emily Dickinson poetry collections, and when I asked the sweet, bespectacled man crouched behind the counter, he quickly led me to a book he had received only yesterday. He always knows whether he has something or not; each book leaves a lasting impression. I immediately bought it (only £3!) and told him of my search. He then responded, "Well, now you know where to come first next time!" I certainly do. I couldn't wait to read and flipped through the poems while walking back, occasionally glancing up just in time to avoid collision, and I stumbled upon this:

               There is no frigate like a book

                   To take us lands away,

               Nor any coursers like a page

                   Of prancing poetry.

               This traverse may the poorest take

                   Without oppress of toll;

               How frugal is the chariot

                   That bears a human soul!

One day, when I'm retired from whatever I settle on doing, I'd like to open up a used bookshop, let the aroma of ink and paper lure book-lovers of all ages in, and I would know every spine sitting on a shelf. Well, I'd like to think so. I would sit and ponder, patient, and wait for wanderers to open the word-packed treasures, soaking up the stories that poured out.

Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!

I love it here in Edinburgh, but I will never deny that it can be really wonderful to get random, little reminders of home.
Last Thursday turned out to be a hectic day, and I ran back to Pollock Halls between my first and second lectures, hoping to stop at the gym for an hour or so before my two o'clock tutorial for Linguistics. For each tutorial, we have to do some sort of homework based on the week's lectures. That week we had started talking about spoken discourse and why old or new information will often be placed at the beginning or end of a sentence. Well, the "speech" they used to mimic speaking was an adaption of a children's book: Blueberries for Sal. As soon as I sat down to rush through the work, I stopped and laughed to myself. I sat there reading the excerpt over for a few minutes hearing the words "kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk" echo in my ears from the hundreds of times my mother read me that story. My mind wandered to Maine, and Acadia, and how I long to return, how I'm so jealous that my brother is going there Memorial day weekend.
While going over the exercise in the tutorial, I couldn't stop thinking about Maine, and when my tutor got to explaining that "New England", when mentioned by the speaker, would be old news to the hearer, since it's a commonly known place, she also figured that "Blueberry Hill" was probably some made-up name for the book. My smile burst out and I told her, "No, it's a real place and this is a great book. Blueberry Hill is in Maine. I've been there." It didn't matter that no one else had even heard of the book. I was swept up in memories.
And just the day before a friend had told me that I could probably find a New York Times at the International News Agent on the Royal Mile. One little piece of home is just a short walk away from George Square. I know I can read 20 articles a month online without being charged, but there's something nice about being able to sit on my bed and peruse the editorials and articles on real newsprint. Maybe next weekend I'll try to get a weekend paper so I can read the travel section and save all the pictures. Or maybe not. It's just nice to know it's there.