I received this in an email from Charter for Compassion; don’t you love it? I downloaded their graphic, but have a feeling they won’t mind. You can find the organization at Charter for Compassion (Initiated by the TED Prize) contact@charterforcompassion.org.
As was the case in Ireland, I have to give the weather lots of credit for our wonderful experience of Scotland. Our tour guide (a native) commented in the Highlands that she had seen such clarity in the notoriously harsh weather challenged mountains less than a half-dozen times in her life. Even without being told how lucky we were, we knew it, and were bowled over.
Scotland has everything: mountains, lakes, seascapes, big skies, desolate ridges, lush glens, gardens, ruins, castles, historic drama and tragedy, colorful characters, notable festivals, good food and whiskey, and a sense of humor. We didn’t try haggis, but enjoyed salmon with neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes) often. Scrumptious cakes, shortbreads and toffee (laced with whiskey) were the perfect ending to delicious meals.
And then there’s Edinburgh. Divided roughly into a two areas, a medieval Old Town between imposing Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, (the Queen’s official residence when in town) and New Town (built in the late 1700s with beautiful Georgian architecture), it’s all remarkably walkable and sustained no WWII damage. There are many delightful pubs along the way when the hilly terrain requires a rest. It’s quite lovely; one could sit in the Princess Street Gardens between the districts all day just to view the Castle above it.
We were there for during the Edinburgh Festival, held annually since 1947 during the last three weeks of August. It is considered one of the world’s most important arts festivals, with theater performers overflowing venues and on the street in a Fringe counterpart. The Edinburgh Book Festival is held at the same time and takes over a city park with tents full of authors, publishers, critics in discussions and readings for days. Edinburgh is UNESCO’s designated City of Literature. When I discovered the “poem of the season” painted on the side of a building near our hotel, I began to get a sense of their deep cultural pride. We noticed that it was perfectly acceptable to read a book in a pub instead of surfing the internet. Who knew?
One festival highlight is the Military Tattoo, held at night at the foot of Edinburgh Castle. It is a spectacle of infantry battalions and Scottish pipe bands, too difficult to describe effectively. It is simply wonderful.
Yes, to answer golfer questions: husband and son played St. Andrews old and new courses, (“new” meaning opened in the late 1800s) along with several others in the area, and departed feeling satisfied and gratified. They finished the old course as a rainbow appeared over the Royal and Ancient club, which summarizes the entire trip: it far exceeded expectations, and absolutely left a mark on us. (More photos available through Flickr link).
I think only ten days in country hardly allows one to offer comments any more substantive than “impressions’, but my impressions of Ireland couldn’t be more positive. We had wonderful weather, which contributes immeasurably to enjoyment; if not entirely sunny days, we had very little rain (and heard about how long and dreary the summer had previously been. ) Purple heather, which covers the ground and climbs up mountains, was in bloom (a spring and fall occurrence). Food and beer were good, the pubs inviting, and the county rugby, Gaelic football and hurling competitions were at the height of their seasonal finals (cheerful but serious business). Cities and villages were decorated in support of their teams, and colorful displays of Irish good cheer were visible everywhere. Once into the countryside, liveliness turns into loveliness. The scenery is varied, dramatic, breathtaking, and laden with history and legend. Gardens love the damp cool Irish air, and were showing off their best stuff for us all over the country. If the weather was more consistently favorable, I feel sure Ireland couldn’t accommodate the people who would love to live there! (I’ve posted many more photos to Flickr if you’d care to follow the link.)
Of all the pre-trip anxieties I listed in my earlier post, only one occurred, and it’s included among the realities that greet me on returning home: mounds of bills and laundry, an overgrown yard, lack of motivation to resume exercise in spite of extra pounds, no food in the refrigerator, hours of time warp with broken sleep patterns and the dreaded respiratory revenge of travel (which now requires steroids and antibiotics, thanks to those coughing seat mates I was anxious about). Having been away nearly a month, there is a price to pay to be sure. I do not enjoy this re-entry period.
When I resurface, a few kind friends will ask if we enjoyed the trip, and of course the answer is yes. They will ask about the weather (unusually wonderful for traditionally rainy Scotland and Ireland), what we enjoyed most (Scotland) and would I recommend the tour company (for some things). After I sort through the several thousand photos I shot and reduce them to a coffee table book for use in the nursing home when I need to be prodded to remember things in a few years, all will fade and I’ll return to “normal” life and routine. But I have to say I’ve been marked by the experience.
Tours are challenging. They are slightly less expensive and less trouble than travel on one’s own (particularly in countries such as Ireland and Scotland where driving is done on the left side of the road in cars in which the driver sits in the right front seat…I found it constantly disconcerting to see the person in the left front seat blissfully asleep or reading as we passed by.) Good tour guides offer a great deal more wonderful information about the history and current culture of a country than I would ever assimilate through guide books, and our Scottish tour director was sensational. In between offering history lessons and fables and “it’s absolutely true” stories (most of which were wonderful myths), she shared local music on our long bus rides which told the tales with even more clarity and poignancy. It was enriching to ride with her.
But tours are exhausting. Up at 6 am, suitcases out at 7, leave at 8 for a long day, often including an evening event. In 14 days on the road with the tour, only two stops included two nights in the same hotel. Even if the busses are “luxury”, with great leg room as ours was, the rides can be tiresome, and they don’t stop where and when I might like them to. And I am inevitably sitting on the “wrong” side of the bus for the best sights of the day… it got to be a joke with us, and frustrated me immensely.
Tours also mean spending a lot of time with total strangers, of all ages and nationalities. It takes at least a week to “settle in” with a group and sort out the comfort zones (which requires some effort), but it’s interesting that it really does occur, and by the second week a level of relaxation and enjoyable silliness asserts itself and becomes quite pleasant. New best friends, probably not; but we have had it happen!
In this post travel trough, I ask myself if it was “worth it”, but don’t have to think about it for long. There are lots of great cities throughout the world, magnificent cathedrals to see, crumbling castles, vivid history brought to life and echoes of courage to hear. How else can one witness the blood-soaked highlands of Scotland on a perfect day when the hills are covered in blooming heather and gorse if one doesn’t leave the house?
I have it. Big time. Every time. I worry about being late, missing connections, getting lost, turbulent flights, terrorists, coughing seat mates, lost luggage, lost passport, lost phone, food that bites, currency I can’t compute, too much to carry, shoes that hurt, feeling clueless. Ridiculous anxieties. It’s not like I haven’t done this before. And it’s not like I’ve experienced more than brief episodes of any of the above, with which I’ve coped adequately at the time. So why am I going through this again?!
Anxieties are all about the future, about events that haven’t actually taken place yet (and probably never will.) Looking at each worry separately, I can do something about uncomfortable shoes and taking too much stuff, but since I’m not likely to, they need to come off this list, and move to the list of things for which I can berate myself later. I can also do something about being late, and be early instead. All other issues are caused by lack of attention (note to self) or are…yikes…out of my control…repeat…out of my control.
I understand how lucky I am to be heading off again, and know when I’m finally on my way how much I’ll enjoy almost all of it…except for…repeat…any of the above. A peek through the door reminds me of past adventures well worth every panic attack, once I step into new space. I’m leaving now, sending “traveling mercies” to all fellow journeyers (as Anne Lamott offered to us in her wonderful book by the same title.)
Our culture is “operating” in a new form of language (notice I didn’t say “speaking”…). The online world, which encourages us to live our lives faster and faster, offers endless options to help us “say” things quicker. We use shorthand abbreviations for common phrases (which become outmoded through some unknown social mechanism, witness the current preference for “haha” over “LOL” for example). Those cute little emojis can aid the reader by adding a clue to the intent of the message, (it’s your birthday so here’s a cake…) and GIFs (Graphic Interchange Formats; I had to look it up…) have grown in popularity to further refine the meaning of our communication efforts. We can just insert animated pictures in our texts and tweets to represent what we want to say and say nothing else at all! Life is good!
Graphic messages are very useful. They make it possible to be cruder and ruder faster, without misinterpretation, what luck! Their impact is more direct than acronyms, particularly if one has missed the secret briefing on what the hieroglyph means; (communication speed is not enhanced when I need to look things up.) It might be cute to add a little emoji candle or explosion graphic in a birthday message, but who can see it without a magnifying glass? Haha.
It’s extremely difficult to be funny, in writing or speech. A facial expression is a fantastic short cut to interpretation and lets you know you’re supposed to laugh, and you can see it again and again until you’re sure of it. Some GIFS are really very funny. As for making communication faster, finding just the right one might take a little time if you’re searching through the many thousands of options available on giphy.com, although you can build your own favorites collection easily over time to speed up the process. Learning to add them to a message might take a couple more days at first as you run into interface complications as I did, but no matter…it’ll get better in time. The good news for our future is that we are well on the way to being able to communicate effectively through gestures, transferring complexities through cyberspace in the roll of an eye. Words can be such a bother.
A bouquet, given to a convalescing friend, made her sneeze, so she gave it to me when I visited. We laughed about how unattractive it was. The flowers were garish (why dye flowers unless they don’t have a lot going for them in the first place?), the petals were drooping and the fragrance (I’m being generous) was less than appealing. I brought them home to toss, but wondered momentarily what the camera might see that I didn’t. I was reminded, once again, of the value of a second look before judgment.
I like illusions. I like the magic of sleight of hand, the sight puzzled over, the pleasure of a surprise. I enjoy experimenting with photography software, particularly when the unexpected emerges from layering, and a new vision appears. The mystery of illusion almost always makes me smile. Facts can tell us about the mechanics behind many illusions, but not what happens in us when we experience them for ourselves.
Words work illusionary wonders too. We believe we know what a word means, but what I label a chair doesn’t look like yours. I think my word describes what you’re seeing, and yet it doesn’t, even if they have common characteristics. If it’s challenging to share the same sense of something that it’s possible to see and touch, the complications inherent in attempting to share the abstract is completely boggling. The words of a story that come alive to me through my mind’s translation don’t necessarily speak to you (which always amazes me when I have loved a book, and a good friend hasn’t.) Our lives are more interesting because of these differences in imprinting and interpretation. But it’s a wonder to me that the words we choose, the layers we apply, the regional peculiarities that exist in our exchanges and the presumption that our visions are similar, can actually produce anything between us but confusion. We live in a world of verbal illusion, sharing in the wide space that mysteriously interacts between our imaginations, mostly quite successfully. I am in awe.
I have been away for awhile. Eighteen months have passed since my last posting to “My Time”, much of which I’ve spent engrossed in theological studies inside and outside a seminary. I never needed to be convinced of my belief in God, but wanted a more solid foundation for my faith, framing concepts within the current culture which has contributed new perspectives to the precepts of my youth. Sometimes I think I “get it” and have “figured things out”, settling into a pleasurable sense of understanding and comfort. And then subtle alterations emerge, sometimes suddenly, and peacefulness is swept away before I know it.
Awareness has become a new watchword for me. Why do I seem to forget what I need to remember in order to stay anchored to my center? I have begun to want to write about this winding road life insists on taking me. Personal experiences, yes; but universal too, I think… Attempting to reason through mystery is not always a satisfying exercise. We’ll see where the path goes in “My Time Too”.
My Time Too 