aberdeen in december

I was away from Aberdeen for a month over Christmas, from the middle of December to the middle of January, & was rather shocked to realize that I missed winter. There was an unusual amount of snow over the month I was gone, and apparently the Don even froze -- but it all quickly melted, and Aberdeen returned to its early-December state, just as I left it -- with verdant grass and ivy, just colder wetter winds and skies a little more grey and unpolished than they were on the bright bright day I took these photos (Dec. 5th, I think).

In December, the flowers were just drying up. Now at the base of this rose, I saw the sharp shoots of daffodils already poking up. It's lovely, so novel, to see flowers emerging at this time of year, but it also shakes me a little. Winter is an important time for me; I am used to having it be at least half of my year, for snows to creep in and then slowly melt. I need my time to hibernate & reflect, to be cold & exhilarated, to be shaped by it. It's part of my home -- I think I always dwell a little bit in winter, because it seems every other seasons is tempered by it. Obviously, summer more delectable & bittersweet because you know what is coming, spring more tangible & momentous because of what has just been experienced.

I'd like to feel at home here, though. Maybe if I lived on this street... This is a lovely little reflecting pool a street-and-a-half over from me, with a sundial, & I covet these cottages at Wrights and Coopers place most dearly. I am not sure who lives in them, faculty perhaps...

Berries of an unknown sort. The thrushes and blackbirds seem to like them. They often gather here in the courtyard by the pool, post-rainshower, to sing.

Reflecting pool, and a reminder I need to find an encyclopedia of local flora. I'm learning the trees, but not all the flowers are known to me yet. After the bird-inhabitants, I must befriend the plants.

Townhouses in the reflecting pool universe. I love the flower-pot chimneys...

...which are sentinel-posts for the seagulls, and important places for them to perch when acting as alarm-clocks.

Oh! Sunlit window tangle! I could hide in here, overlook the campus vegetable garden. (I'm excited as I just found out they have a co-op where you can get a box of local season vegetables each week for 5 pounds...)

See, the vines are never completely bare. Even now, after the wet snows fell, there are a few yellow blossoms still clinging.

Not as many as then, though.

When does the earth rest here? It must be a very light sleeper. (Certainly, getting your REM is healthy, but shouldn't it be punctuated by a nice deep time of unstirring dreaming?)

I like it when the ivy climbs the trees; it looks as if they are wearing green sweater sleeves.

So much ivy, so bright & healthy, all over the brick walls. This hasn't changed at all, not even dulled.

Even the naked trees, bare of ivy, are covered with light green moss or algae, so they glow an amber green in the late afternoon sun.

So I am wandering around a little confused now, in this odd season of greengrey like nothing I've lived through. I feel like Moomintroll in Moominland Midwinter -- only I am disoriented by the lack of snow & cold, by the odd warmth of the land. Where is my white blanket? I am craving my encompassing whiteness, longing for the winter I had for just one month. I'm so glad I had that I had it, however briefly -- I need the winter, along with the transitions of spring and fall, distinct changes reflecting a time of liminality, of being between, to nourish me. )

easy things.

rory leaping in the dunes, ythan estuary, newburgh, nov. 21, 2009

"...would you prefer the easy way? No? Well, okay, then don't cry..."*

Sometimes it's really comforting for me just to acknowledge that what I want to do is not easy. I have never, when I think about it, wanted things that are easy or uncomplicated or conventional, academically or otherwise. It's not because they are difficult that I want them, because I think I must prove something; I just happen to want things these things that are not full of ease.

& it's difficult sometimes. It makes me very deeply tired, & so unsure. I wish they were easier, or rather, the higher order desires kick in, & I wish I wanted easier things... but then I think of what easier things might look like, & realize that's just not what I want. I could do 'easier' things, certainly. But I would be very unfulfilled.

& that would be far worse -- I realize that I fear having regrets from wasting opportunities far more than I fear these un-easy things I desire to do. I am so profoundly fortunate to even be in the position to pursue them, I am so lucky to be here, to be supported by so many people in what I do. I will not betray myself, I will not squander this.

*oh, Ani DiFranco, & flashbacks of being 16. Oh dear.

trying to reassure myself

Nearly every time I go out along the Don running, or walk to the river-mouth, I see grey herons gliding over, or standing patiently in the shallows waiting for dinner to swim by. They are silent & solitary & patient & I admire them. Sometimes there are two together, a little ways apart, both up to their own thing, but still enjoying company, being silent together. I relate to their hermetic tendency, & how in Scottish and Irish stories they are associated with wisdom, & eccentricity, digging around in the muck, wading out in search of knowledge.

I am stuck in the muddy reaches right now, in terms of academia. Reading endlessly, trying to write papers, learn languages, feeling overwhelmed by minutiae, wondering if anything is really meaningful or important at all, if I have anything to contribute, if there is a point to making such contributions. Wondering what I am doing here. Anxious, panic-attacking, can't think straight, but also can't stop thinking, which prevents sleeping.

So today, such crankiness & mild despair abounds. But it will pass. It's a recurrent suffering, & I know it to come & go. Right now, I'm just standing like a slightly perturbed, not-so-serene heron, poking about with my beak in the murky water, hoping to strike inspiration again.

the wind & the sand

I've never felt such wind as sea wind. Sandstorming across the beach & up along the bluffs above the Ythan, rustling through the grass and the gorse. Gorse-bush is a fascinating plant, & plentiful here (hence the name Ythan, which is derived from the Pictish word for the species) -- it's horribly prickly -- in Gaelic, it's called conasg, which means exactly that -- but also edible. It's often harvested and then 'bruised', smashed about until soft, & then fed to cows and horses as winter food. (Wild ponies eat it straight up in the springtime!) It's high in protein, and apparently people can put it in salads, or make wine or dyes from the flowers. Growing everywhere along the east coast, it's a strong shelter from the wind for the nesting birds.

The dunes here are covered in a stiff, sturdy grass called marram, or matweed. Such a silvery- green, the colour of seafoam, it looks soft in the wind, like a covering of fine hair over the red earth. It has been used for thousands of years here to thatch houses and bind baskets, as well as making weaving combs.

It has been planted further inland purposely to help curb erosion... It's called muirineach (muran for short) in Gaelic, which has a lovely meaning: muir = ocean, ineach = generosity. The sea, which also is ever taking the land, also gives back; it nourishes the growth of these hardy grasses, & prevents the land from slipping away into its grasp.

Here it the imprint of the water & wind on land unfolds -- you can watch where the wind has swept up the dunes, embraced & pulled away, shaping the sandy waves of an inland sea. Standing with your face in the wind, such a wind, it's easy to feel like a stone -- feeling the air attempt to sculpt you, particle against particle, & it's such a feeling of dissolving, like you are just water & dust & glue, & the wind mixing with your breath will slowly undo you.

& the sand hides secrets. Just over, in a valley hidden from the sea, rusted rails decayed upon a hill of shale.

Further up, the bricks of another mysterious structure, (perhaps once a house?) slipped away into the dunes, & I wondered how much the dunes had been shifting, what else was long buried under my sliding steps as I walked, what else lay beneath lay beneath the paws of the sand.

the sea, reclaiming

Remnants of a fishing boat partway up the Ythan Estuary -- a small shelter, now home to black seaweed, kelp, algae, barnacles...

The remnants of nets are still tangled up amongst the broken wood.

Pillars in the water, near the river mouth. I'm not sure what they once were meant to support, or barricade. The waves will have none of that, it seems.

A colony of live barnacles, reclaiming a rock, little mouths shut tight against the air. Sleeping at low tide, when the water returns they'll feed, feathery tongues singing into the current.

The crows & gulls come, clam-hungry, smashing the little fingernail-moons of the shells on the rocks. This one will be slowly ground to dust, as fine as the sand it now rest on, wind & water scalloping away at every small ridge & edge.

a step / beyond the wind

Stones in the windblown sand, beach at the Ythan Estuary, outside Newburgh, Scotland, Nov. 2009

(from Roethke's A Field of Light, Part II)

Was it dust I was kissing?

A sigh came far.

Alone, I kissed the skin of a stone;

Marrow-soft, danced in the sand.

(Apparently this blog is becoming an illustrated guide to Theodore Roethke. His poems + the sea = comfort to me.)

(from Roethke's Words for the Wind, Part III)

Under a southern wind,
The birds and fishes move
North, in a single stream;
The sharp stars swing around;
I get a step beyond
The wind, and there I am,
I'm odd and full of love.

Wisdom, where is it found? --
Those who embrace, believe.
Whatever was, still is,
Says a song tied to a tree.
Below, on the ferny ground,
In rivery air, at ease,
I walk with my true love.

What time's my heart? I care.
I cherish what I have
Had of the temporal:
I am no longer young
But the winds and waters are;
What falls away will fall;
All things bring me to love.

Me & the wind & the sea, just beyond the Ythan Estuary, Nov. 2009

if you are sad...

...the cure is probably seals*. A whole pile of snoozing Scottish harbour seals all lined up like little sausages on the sand, sleepy & making little snarfing sounds. Rolling about with their flippers in the air, speckled bellies starved for the late November sun.

See, they are so graceful in the water, it's hard to not laugh when they flop ashore & try to walk on their fins. You will smile. This is a fact.

*please be careful of the dosage. It may be possible to die of cuteness.