I am rehaunting the place where my friends still stalk as spirits summoned by my memory. I have imagined revisiting these places that matter to me—all our study abroad’s significance will somehow be represented by coming back here where we all began—and now I want to torment myself with the meaning that is lost, or rather, the experiences that to the present are lost, while dwelling melancholically on the past, like a weasel sucking it out of an egg.
Jamie MacDonald Reid picked me up from the bus stop near Bread Street. It was just like the first time I came to Edinburgh, but now I’m a battle-hardened traveller that is not afraid of jet-lag or as touched by it. There the first time in the airport I arrived with Jon and Bess, whom I’d met in NY. Marshall walked by, missing his luggage. No one else would come for awhile, since we were a day early.
Katy Pitts was wandering on the wide flat shingly sidewalk, as casually lost in a massive foreign city as one might be in a library at home. I want to scream ‘Katie!’ again when I find her, except I know I won’t, other than the memorial ghost I’ll conjure. How necromantic.
I’ll go to the Tesco where Congo bodywash will be purchased to cover Matt’s beautiful not-african body. I’ll laugh again, but other than his long-vanished echoes, I’ll be alone.
I’ll sit on the little dais thing in front of the National Gallery, eating lunch with Emma. We´ll wander looking for others. We’ll gaze into the valley near the Burns monument; we’ll sit on the sidewalk, I’ll show her Anberlin, she’ll watercolour a cathedral we saw on the first day; then we’ll make a pilgrimage to the Elephant House where Harry Potter was born and I will be moved by the encounter with the view out the back window which is so romantic because there is a graveyard beneath it and a lofty ridge with Edinburgh Castle (read: Hogwarts) beyond it and the other British streets, lamps, and buildings. I’ll be moved because Harry’s one of my favorite people too, and he’s here as much as anyone, all through my imagination—or shall I call it ‘the eye of faith’? Or is it ‘poetic faith’? Or is it real faith? ‘I am not solitary whilst I read and write’ (Emerson). Lord Kames called it ‘ideal presence.’ All I know is I won’t be alone. But also I will be. It will feel bittersweet, and somehow the bitter is the sweet part sometimes.
I am hiking early in the morning, at 7. It would have been earlier but yesterday I left my Dublin hostel at 4 something and I didn’t feel up to rising earlier today. I am fully equipped to be fully and appropriately accoutred: a kilt is slung over my backpack, and an old box with a squeaky brass handle is inside it carrying the true treasure and weapon of tribute: bagpipes. Sarah Moulton, who taught me how to play my one song, Amazing Grace, after dinner groups, would be so proud. Well, I guess, based on how she actually always regarded it, she’d just be weirded out especially. I wanted to run through the Scottish wilds under the moon down to the lochshore and pipe my praises to my hero William Wallace alone in the wee hours. He’d be with me too. He is.
In the Winter semester of 07 I had History of Europe from 1914 on. Dr. Choate told us about fascist Italy, and how in their chamber of war they had a roll call. They would go down the list of their warriors, one by one, calling them by name: ‘so and so. ‘here.’ So and so. ‘here.’ Etc. Whenever they got to the name of someone who had fallen in battle, when they reached their empty chair, in unison all who remained would say, ‘Here.’ I was moved and never forgot that. All for one and one for All, and things like that come to mind when I ponder it, again, in my mind. I don’t think prayer is much less than envisioning: what is it that you worship? What do you think about—what do you pray for? They are almost one thing for me now, communing with Truth in vision.
I failed at my Scottish dream earlier, but the fact that my flight out of Europe was from Edinburgh also gave me a chance at redemption, and immersion in nostalgia, both. I determined to rehike Arthur’s Seat because it was their I felt our British fellowship was first forged: the fellowship of our writing. I remember something about Tiffany as I tread on dewy plush grass, and soon take off my shoes like we did earlier, though it’s a hassle, because I promised Katie Pitts I would. No one is here to give me a ‘Chaco check,’ this time though, but I still hear Katie saying it. (Also, I beheld as I was transfigured before her voice of the pure Romantic childlike poet, in vision, the august spectre of Katy A. bow o’er me as if in benediction as I there symbolically removed my shoes as I approached our sometime Sinai.)
I am determined also to enact my own fascist roll call while I pay my tribute to the fallen, and reenact a ritual that to me is meaningful: I will stand atop Arthur’s windy throne and there recite all names. I will ponder my favorite memories with each. I will feel the feeling of the overall community. I will bask in the sweet memory as I forget it isn’t real, then I will feel it more acutely as I remember it isn’t, but at least it was.
That’s what I remember from seeing Les Miserables in London more than almost any other thing. For one moment, when Marius is in the tavern, alone, he is lost in a presently past moment and forgets it is only a dream. He smiles in pure joy. Then he remembers now, and the remembering is all the more painful because he now he also so well remembers the sweetness of then. So too, in a rugged, mountain way, I am returning back to a sacred place of friendship: I am alone, alone in a natural tavern or perhaps mountain temple, where there are, so to speak, ‘empty chairs and empty tables.’
In Normandy, with a lifetime friend from home, Justin, whom I met up with after our program, I read an unforgettable story. During heavy fighting in an attempt to take Saint-Lo, France, an American captain was killed in battle. His men loved him so much that they draped his coffin in an American flag, and carried him with them as they fought their way into and took the city. ‘Captain ____.’ ‘HERE.’
All I know is, of our charging squadron, no one is here anymore. I remember that sacred space of separation from all the rush of life was sanctified as ‘England and Lit: 2009’ and how for a moment we were all that mattered. If it felt so good, why does it have to be any other way? Why live another way?
There are ants, I mean people, crawling over the hill though (that’s what Arthur’s Seat is to me, a mountain original lad). If I was Whitney, I would say, ‘I am pissed.’ I’m not, so I just say, ‘if I was Whitney I would,’ and sort of get away with doing what I want without scandalizing my classy grandma with casual/crass language. (I like it on the inside, un poco. Or at least the freedom, which it may not be but it represents.) That red is not endemic to the hill; it must be a jacket. Feces. Big fecis. You sir, are a fecis. I’m sorry, I was just upset. It was my fault. I should’ve gotten up earlier. ‘But I was too tired, really…’ I think.
I am bummed, truly, because now I can’t stand where everyone sat huddled out of the wind near the very top, and listened to Christian tell us about how its name is maybe a corruption of ‘Archer’s Seat.’ Marshall will be pretending with me: ‘Oh I’m sorry, (King Arthur), was that your seat? Like, the whole thing?’ That’s where I was going to bagpipe at 3 am. I’m not about to put on a military kilt borrowed from Jamie, and pipe out some second-class, novice Amazing Grace in front of a bunch of traditional Scotsmen and effectually diss their culture and disgrace myself. Maybe that was a cowardly thought.
I found an outcropping hill, halfway up the hike, and piped there. I am so new to the pipes it takes all I’ve got in me to semisuccessfully play the song, let alone enjoy the moment as if I were Harry Potter summoning his best friends with the Resurrection Stone. ‘Do you think the dead who truly loved us ever really leave us?’ I just finished rereading book 3 and its foreshadowing. After I play the song, I take about 16 pictures doing dance moves (which were atrocious yet somehow encouraged on the trip—it’s a medley I assembled of the worst things I’ve ever seen in the name of dance); looking like a superlatively benign priest in unbridled magnanimity (that one was for you, Chris Bennion!); and, naturally, attempting to reconcile kilts, ninja kicks, and modesty. Those three things, man, whew! Bad brew. If you’re endowed, and male, however, I can show you at least one pic of a wicked sick Scotch ninja kick (every one of those words might be interpreted as literally as it may ‘slangfully’).
I put my shoes back on where I mentioned the broken glass I’d seen to barefoot Roxanne, near the top. My kilt was stowed again; I wonder how Superman always found a phone booth near when he needed to pull out his piece of supercloth; I used a big British bush.
Old people were all over (I guess they hike in the mornings), like ten of them. This was the top. I was on a secret mission: ‘On the top there are two pillars. Go to the higher of the two. The white one. Go to the side with the Red Lion stenciled on it. Beneath it above the bedrock, next to the biggest stone there, are two smaller ones. Between these I have left thee my message,’ said Marshall. He left Europe on July 3rd. Today is the 5th. He paid homage to our fellowship as well by rehiking the lofty throne of England’s greatest symbol of gaelic subversion and appropriation as well. He promised to leave tidings. But alas, I arrived 48 hours later; and they were gone. I was already planning this essay, because this was going to be a super melodramatic, indulgent, and as I said before, melancholic rant. I was going to whine about how the truant tidings symbolized the impossibility of hope ever living, or ever finding joy once it was lost again, or who knows what sort of emo thing like that. Kinda pathetic. I stood atop the pillar where John Bennion would have stood, indeed, striking the pose he once struck—grinning, with his hands in his pockets and hair blown wild like the peninsulas of western Ireland—that was cool and necessary for my tribute, ‘Oh captain, my captain!’
As I shivered in the same seat wherein I heard Christian’s little lecture, I realized it was fast Sunday. Feces. –the kid in Bariloche just put on some jazzy music; I wonder if it will change how I write…-- I had saved a strawberry rice pudding for the top, just in time to remember I shouldn’t eat it. But I need food. I’m hiking a lot today. I think God understands. I’d justified the excursion on the Sabbath because this was to be a sort of communion for me. I pondered. Finally I decided to fast: maybe I didn’t have to, but the man I want to be would do it, so I will too. Hunger doesn’t matter, I decided.
I wanted to say, ‘I was too cold, so I wanted to move, but I didn’t want to leave where everyone had been. So I stayed.’ Then I decided I was ridiculous, but I still needed to see Edinburgh Castle. I hadn’t done the roll call either. A sheet of gray flitted towards me over the distant houses, I saw. Miles away, past the castle, the rain was defined very crisply, something rather striking, since storm clouds generally have nebulous boundaries. I took pictures to verify it was indeed visibly progressing over house by house. Yep. Then I felt a raindrop. Then I heard an old woman start complaining. (‘Well look what you’ve done now, Frank, since you wanted to come up here.’) I chuckled a bit disgustedly. She was right though, we were all getting wet.
Then we fled. The Highland storm was giving us a drubbing. I gallantly let Frank get off the mountain (where I hope hopelessly that things are better) with his wife first.
I put on the long-sleeved shirt that went with the kilt, but shook anyways. ‘John—the time he came to me after I’d complained a lot to him, and was so Christlike, and told me he thought I had a point. How he let me carry the leftover cakes from Kendle.’ ‘Karla—she’s a fountain of unconditional goodwill and cheer.’ ‘Chris—he wanted me to come see his band play.’ The musings were getting much shorter, and I had wanted to relish each one. In fact, I soon stopped reminiscing at all, and simply started saying the names so I could tell people I’d done what I’d said I would. I turned tail (it was a very wet one, mind) and booked it after Frank.
And caught up in 25 seconds. I skipped past them off the trail, and kept running. I was entirely unprepared to deal with rain, and it was freezing in the wind even before I was wet. As I was running, though, a thought stopped me. I was maybe 100 ft from the top now. ‘What am I running for? What am I worried about?’ I decided to think that over for a second. All I had to worry about was Jamie’s stuff: his kilt would be fine, and I could cover the box. The rain pelted me in the back. I was halfway turning when another memory hit me. Somewhere on the way to Switzerland I was explaining to my friend Justin about Keats and tuberculosis and how about 2/3 of the Romantic poets had killed themselves trying to have intense experiences with nature in the Scottish highlands. I felt a very, very big grin hit my rain-splattered face—I love irony. I bet any true Romantic would’ve done the same thing. Then I turned completely and started sprinting back up the steep ridges, hum-yelling Braveheart notes and determined to not rest for a single second: hunger wouldn’t stop me, neither would rain.
The pedestal under which Marshall’s note should have been was the highest point in the Edinburgh area. It was slippery in the rain. Ha. Who cared? It was semi-dangerous perhaps to mount it with just the wind, like John and I had done. Whatever. I jumped atop it and screamed into the wind, as the gray curtains draped entirely around me. My arms were 45 degree angles: ‘Frreeeedddoooommmmm!’ I howled. I was alone in the storm, the last one to face it, while all others retreated down the trail. ‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ I yelled.
‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ echoed back. On the next hill down, a girl sat mildly drowning in the attitude of one sketching a scene in the central park, saluting crazily back at me. ‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ I responded. She tried to say something, but I’ve never had good ears, and we gave up trying to communicate. Well, other than yelling ‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ about fifteen more times apiece. Maybe that’s why I got an insanely sore throat and thought I was going to die when I was grievously sick a few days later in Buenos Aires. Boo yeah. (Not what I said at the time, but I never recanted: ‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ Ok, I’m abusing the ‘copy and paste’ functions and hotkeys now.) Noting this correspondence is important because it was awesome, and because it felt exhilirating to have had someone witness my wild and fierce, brave cry of freedom. Freedom, I suppose, from circumstance. I would not be a creature who was acted upon: right then, I was free of it all. I did what I wanted. And I wanted to be epic. I was.
A bit later my friend left. My hands remained up—I needed no Aaron nor ¿ to sustain my burly Mosaic position. ‘John!’ I grunted fiercely. I saw his constant kindness, non-judgmentalism, and above all, his love. ‘He loved me when I didn’t deserve it.’ ‘HERE!’ ‘Karla! She always was so kind to me.’ ‘HERE!’ I bellowed. ‘Chris!...’ and I continued, this time also remembering how he felt like a brother sometimes. Rain poured down my bowed head, then I raised it and looked to the sky (and lost my equilibrium and almost fell). I got about halfway through, then two equally brave and battle-hardened fearless Aussies found me, Byronically heroic, transcendant, and irrational (not as Byronic as Jon Smith, though). A wild man in the mountains, an immensely pleased with himself one. They laughed. I laughed. I asked if they wanted to get up, and offered to get down. They declined, but took a picture of me. I told them this was a sacred ritual Mormon study abroad finales invariably required of their cultic participants. I perceived much soon after. ‘Actually…’ one said. ‘You want to get up here too!’ I nodded triumphantly, hopping down. ‘Yeeeahhh!’ he said. I took one of him, and we all stood in the rain, his friend atop the other pillar. We were free, like all the kids on top of desks in the end of Dead Poets Society.
We parted as friends. I reascended. I counted a few more names. ‘Sammy—too much to say at once. She scratched my head in a friendly, familiar way as I had it bowed, spiritually weary, praying, reaching, after sacrament meeting in Bath.’ It was more what all that moment represented than that single thing itself. ‘HERE.’
A group of five Scotsmen hiking all the nearby peaks in one day then came. We became friends. (If you ever want friends, just act like a crazy mountain hermit. Everyone wants to be friends with them.) I took a picture for them, then hopped back up, counting more names: ‘Rick – showed me you should be humble and simply love because that is the better way, even if you could be proud if you wanted to because you have a PhD in a top college and are smart or something. Plus he rescued one of my zip off pant legs from the dark magic in the maw of Merlin’s cave.’ ‘HERE!’
I caught myself simply reciting the names, worried I couldn’t recall all thirty. So I started over again with number eleven or so, enjoying the feelings and relationships more. I actually had failed and only gotten to 28 once. I decided to trust in the spirit of the venture and that all would come to mind if I recalled them from my heart. This time it worked. I said the last name, ‘Rachel,’ and a thrill shot through me (not that you were the one I forgot, Rachel ;), as if it truly was a sacred ceremony I’d just finished performing. The thirtieth name. Technically there were thirty one, but I counted them squished into thirty ‘cause the number sounds more magically delicious. I was soaking wet. But my arms were out, my palms were up, and my spirit as unshackled as my body.
It was interesting. I think I really did complete something in that moment. That act of ceremonial tribute was something beautiful, and that thrill was a powerful experience. It was beauty in the present. I had come to dwell in the past, but in consorting with ghosts I somehow found out I was alive where I was. I think if I knew why I tend to coddle my precious ‘pasts’ I would understand why I don’t do as well in the present as I would like. I think I lack hope for the future, because often the present feels too empty, so I turn to the past. I want to learn to live better. Carpe diem—this one. I need to learn to say, and have it echo as permanently as being, or reality, rather than an action, ‘Oh Captain, my Captain!’ In the meantime, I act until it echoes, I guess. Fake it til you make it.
The storm passed as suddenly as it came; the veil was torn from me and swept further into the east. I could see Edinburgh Castle again. A Scot and some Californians had since attained the peak as well by now, and I got down for them to conquer the altar as well. I don’t want to crawl on God’s altar, incidentally. When I am best—when I decide to fast—I stand on it: I think less is less than true sacrifice: all must be voluntary. I want to give my whole will: I believe that’s how I will feel present and free.
Maybe I am the one, ironically, that was least present while I went on saying ‘Here’ for every single one of my writing fellowship friends. I lived who knows where in time. Joy is in the present, I do believe that. The past offers some, even if it is tortured, feeling, though.
A kind woman and her husband offered to take a picture of me when they arrived, and heard my story (not like I was throwing it at everyone, they just asked how long I’d been up there, and I was so pumped up about my thrills that I had to tell them why I had stayed too). You should take a picture, the lady said. I already had, with my Aussie mates of course, but thought I’d oblige plus I might be wetter and hard-corer looking now. Plus she offered to let me put on her red jacket. ‘Like a cape!?’ I asked. Yes, she said, if you want, like a cape. The Scot had overheard my story too—he was super jovial. ‘Hey, what’s that?’ he asked, indicating my backpack, slunk against the white graffittied pedestal. ‘Oh, uh, that’s a kilt my friend let me borrow.’ ‘Well heaven’s sakes, man, you’d better put that on too!’ Someone then asked, ‘and what’s in that box?’ ‘Oh, uh, some bagpipes.’ ‘What?!’ said all the Californians, laughing. I confessed their origination and purpose. Then somehow framed by a withdrawing storm atop the highest peak o’er Edinburgh, I was induced to stand, as fully and fearlessly accoutred as I might’ve dreamed, or dared to do while in nightly solitude, in a full military kilt, matching shirt, and red jacket cape; and pipe as best as my remaining trashed lungs allowed, the song ‘Amazing Grace.’ My lungs gave out about two thirds through. Everyone cheered for me, which I appreciated, but I squeezed the last bit of air out and fought desperately, falteringly, on. I kept thinking, ‘This is it, my one chance. My one chance to do it right. I’m here in Scotland right now. Now is when it’s all gotta come out. Don’t hold anything back. Leave it all up here, like you’d leave it all out on the field in track. All you got.’ (‘A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later’—and nor does he know what he would have been like an hour later’!) And when I finally, completely, helplessly gave way before reality—which broke my body, but never , I am thrilled to say, my spirit—I raised my fist in fury and screamed again, more naturally than I’ve screamed it ever, before or since, atop that (forbear me a bit of dramatized romanticism) windy peak whence legends ever came (ok, now I don’t even know what I’m talking about), ‘Freedom!’ in my rawest, bereft of fear-est, most genuine voice. And my new friends clapped again.
It wasn’t that I had forgotten my old friends, it was that I was presently enjoying some new ones. I was havin’ a heckuva time, now, after finding peace with the past. I made friends with a jew who made a very funny remark he thought was offensive about Mormons, and which might have should have been, but was definitely funny, and he said to look him up if I went to the Jerusalem Center. His friends were from Cambridge, where I’d always dreamed of going, too, and we talked all about it. I guess my chums up there loved the fact they’d got to be a part of a more spiritually begotten Scotsman, and as such, so did I. There was no way I’d have had the guts—I must sadly say—to get up and do that on my own, without friends to encourage me. I guess that’s why they’re so great—they help you when you lack strength to do, or to see.
Walking towards the ruins of St Anthony’s chapel on the way back down I listened to the Freedom Theme on the Braveheart soundtrack. I saw him in a crucifix tortured on the altar, willing, like a hero; it was coming to the part where he yells freedom, and again—yes, again (screaming freedom is like taking a spiritual vitamin C for you, I suspect, but definitely for me)—I simply wanted to. I looked around at all the random hikers walking up to Arthur’s Seat—it was now well after morning, it was even after noon. If I did, they must think I was the weirdest, craziest, stupidest guy around. What would you think of a guy who screamed random quotes from hero movies which he constantly envisions for the love he bears them and help they bear him?
Well, I decided I didn’t care. ‘FREEEDDDOOOOMMMMMM!’ I yelled in Scotland, one last time. It rolled down the ridge to the hikers I would soon cross who were headed up. If they looked queryingly at me, like, ‘Uh, wtf?’ I would simply, unapologetically, and high-headedly look back, like, ‘Sorry, it’s just what I sort of wanted to do. And you know what (to quote Whitney), ‘I do what I want.’ ‘ Turns out, when we met, they didn’t even know who’d let out that fearless and manly scream. But I did.
