Brains!

Scottish, English Borders Trip 2008

LA to Chicago –

I forgot about screaming children. Why do I always forget? Three kids, their parents not even attempting to control them. Three sets of lungs that small could not possibly create the piercing noises that shrieked through the cabin now all to often.

On our decent into Chicago, I saw now and again a jet of air streaming over the wing, like a funnel of fog. We hit some “moderate” turbulence as we passed over rain shower clouds. One realizes how fast one is going as the plane zips through the clouds, dipping and tipping as you go until suddenly you’re surrounded by gray clouds.

Chicago-

Rainy…cold…and thank god for getting off the plane, breaking up the flight certainly helped me.

Chicago to London-

Holy crap, I can play Tetris on the touch screen Wait wait, there’s a touch screen? Oh wow, I’m watching Dark Knight. I was 15 the last time I flew, Natalia and I played nertz on the floor of the airplane. This is a whole different experience.

I got chicken and Pasta. Ew airplane food. Oh wow this oatmeal brownie thing ain’t half bad. So they turn the lights off of course, and I’m left to try to sleep, its 12:30 am local time, which by the way is the Atlantic. We’re at 36000 feet, its -68F outside, and going 600 and something miles per hour (according to the Flight Path option on my touch screen). I can’t sleep of course its only 6:35 pm in LA for one the thing, the other is that it feels like someone is pushing their thumb between my eyebrows and I can’t get enough suction going in my nostrils to breathe in. For a while I pulled my Sherpa hat down over my eyes. I tired to lean on the bendable headrest attached to my seat. I thought about how if Jordan were here I’d snuggle up to him, lean all my weight and most likely I’d be able to sleep. But he’s not here.

Then I entered that weird limbo where one isn’t awake or asleep. I thought about how good this separation would be ultimately, even though I wished Jordan could come on this trip with me. A good break often leads people to realize how much they miss each other. Suddenly I wondered if I were in a comatose state, lying in some hospital bed what that would be like. I thought about past half jokes. Then I either dreamed or thought about what it would be like if Jordan were in a coma, what I would say. “Get up, I know you are in there!” I thought about how I would try to snuggle up next to him, fall asleep, only to wake up to no one, just a body breathing in and out. I almost started crying when I pulled myself out of the limbo. It was the strangest thing ever.

Hawick-

I’m at Langhurst a 1913 house on a hill, owned by my uncle Robin and Margret. It seems smaller, then even the last time I stayed here, when I was 15. It’s pretty cold. But I’m not uncomfortable by any means. We landed in bright sunshine, but the strange thing were the shadows that fell long across the ground, as if it were 5 in the afternoon, but it was only 11:30 am, welcome to high latitudes. We rented a wee four-door hatchback and I had to tell my dad to stay in one lane, and mind his yielding on the round about more then once. But otherwise we survived the 1-½ hours to get here. Other then that I examined the scenery.

It’s like Humboldt, the colors anyway. Very green grass scattered with sheep mostly, rather than the dairy cows of the north coast. Hedges of wild growth in all the autumn shades fading into winter dreary brown. There are groves of trees neatly trimmed into square quadrants, the remainders of little woods. But these trees compare not at all with giant redwood stands. I took in every road sign, wanting to take pictures of all of them because they made me giggle so much. Everywhere here has a name. However as I as telling my dad, most places in California have names, we just don’t know them. When we arrived at Langhurst house in Hawick, I was flooded with memories I looked around eagerly for Becky, their dog, but of course she died a couple years back. Uncle Robin left a post-it haphazardly written on the kitchen door, “Be back at 130 Ian, gone to something-something-something”. Both dad and I climbed back into our car and turned the heater on, staring out across the little valley where Hawick lies. All the apartments, and old houses, gray stony structures with white frames, piled practically on top of each other up the far side of the hills. I fell asleep for 20 minutes, probably the only real sleep I’d had since we left. When Robin arrived home, I asked if I could shower, he said Id have to wait till the heater warmed up some water. Oh yes, I forgot. I took a shower, and felt gloriously better instantly.

After having taken a good solid two-hour nap, Margret arrived. I had forgotten how much she was like my dad, them being siblings and all of course. I remembered how much I liked Margret, how her accent was rich and deep, and her voice high and watery.

Langholm-

I hardly slept all night, somewhere around 6 I fell asleep all the way till 11 when my dad woke me up, shouting we were late to grannies. With honey smothered toast we ran out the door. Langhom, a town of about 2000 people sits a 20 miles south of Hawick. My granny lives in an upstairs two-bedroom apartment, she’s lived there as long as I can remember. It smells the same, fusty sort of, but has a toasty sort of feeling. Maybe that’s because she keeps the “fireplace” up full blast. I say “fireplace” because it rather looks like the front grill of a car, with gas flames In fact many people have these.

My Granny has a terrible short-term memory. It’s only deteriorating faster and faster as well. She showed me a picture on the newspaper three or four times, forgot what we had for lunch, and asked what day it was all afternoon. She’s always been a very critical person, and her memory has no problems remembering old grudges and bad feelings towards people even after years. She can easily become confused, and disorientated, and hates to be taken care of or controlled. But if you keep her in the right mindset, and a positive giggly mood she’s quite hilarious. I was fixated with the Scottish accent and language. Sometimes I wish I could leave a tape recorder out so that I could catch al the interesting sayings and words.

Dad and I went on a walk called Gaskells, which goes up along the ridge, and it loops along the river and cemetery. It was misting rain down, reminding me of walking home after class.

After this-

After this, I stopped a daily journal. Mostly it was because my lap top battery died, and when we relocated to Carlisle, where my Aunt and Uncle live, my wall plug in adapter no longer worked. Why not write with pen and paper? Well I tried, but I’m so used to things pouring out of me quickly that I continuously got stuck on single thoughts. The other reason is that, well I got something in my eye. My last day in Hawick, I was washing my face, and of course got soap in my right eye. Furiously I flushed out the burning soap, but at the same time scratched or placed a minuscule particle in my eye that for the next three days bothered me. I couldn’t sleep not only because of jet lag, but because of this eye issue.

However it did allow me to take advantage of the UK NHS system. We called up this place called Cue Doc, in Carlisle and I told them my condition, swearing there was still something caught in there, and no amount of Boots Pharmacy eye drops and baths was going to get it out. I told them my name, and that my address was the one in Carlisle but that I was from America. No questions asked, the same day I had an appointment made at 12:15. We went, and my name was called within a few minutes. This brutish nurse had me lay down and then she swiped (in my opinion) jabbed my eye with a quetip. “Well I can’t see anything, but I’m giving you this prescription, you’ve probably scratched it”, she said in a thick English borders accent. It was a tube of antibiotic gel, great…cure an eye scratch (which I still claim wasn’t a scratch but a minuscule particle) with antibiotics. But all in all I was impressed with the non-emergency doctors office, and my Aunt assured me if I went straight to a regular NHS hospital I would have had to wait.

Anyways the rest of my time in Carlisle was pleasurable, it hardly rained, and was even sunny on some days. Anytime I was outside the crispy air oxygenated my eye and I felt loads better. Carlisle has a population of about 70,000 and sits just south of the England/Scotland border. Its pretty old, it began as a Roman town, called Lunguvallium, which was established to serve the forts along Hadrian’s Wall. There’s a castle, the remains of a city wall, which used to encompass the entire city, and pubs dating back to the 1500’s.

Carlisle United Football-

One of our outings was to the local football team match. Carlisle being in the second conference (so not with Manchester United but below that) had been on a severe losing streak. This of course wreaked havoc on the minds of the local fans, which lets just say mostly everyone. It’s like whether you want to care or not, you’re either suckered into caring or you’re miserable cause the people who do care talk about it all the time, so you end up dying for the team to get itself together and do well again. Anyways Carlisle had not scored a single point, let alone won a game since September. Apparently they “played too much in air, but weren’t good at executing it”, and for the first twenty minutes, it did appear that they were kicking the ball up, but no one was there to do anything about it. In my opinion they just looked like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. Not that I know anything about football, but these guys were not pulling off anything that I would consider a play.

Anyways, I sat in the stands, growing anxious and nervous despite my indifference to the sport and who won or not. Surrounding my locals grumbling, “what ya doin? Ref! What a load of bollix! What ye doin”, and many other dismaying statements, that revealed how betrayed, embarrassed, disappointed, and frustrated they were with the goings on of the season. But when they scored that first goal, my god everyone, even the elderly 90-year-old men jumped up screaming as if they had just won the lottery. They ended up winning against Brighton 3-1. It was a very good game. After that first goal, the chickens, found their heads, started passing to actual players and no open spaces and executed real football plays. It was great. I myself got so into it; I was sweating despite the freezing wind. Afterwards everyone kept asking if we were coming back next week, so as to assure that the team would win again, that it must be us acting as good luck charms that secured a victory. Sadly we wouldn’t be, and now I’m back home and have been removed from the entire world of football, no longer care if they are winning or losing or what.

The Last Couple of Days-

After a Carlisle we looped back to Edinburgh to see my sister and catch our flight home. The drive was lovely actually. There was some rain, and wind but the colors and scenery seemed to be accentuated by it some how. When we had driven down to Carlisle we drove closer to the East, and the landscape was much more compacted, meaning the hills and valleys were clustered together more. But the way we drove back via a more westerly route, the landscape features were more spread apart. In no way were they vast, for I only think of American landscapes as vast, but everything seemed more open, maybe even flatter.

Edinburgh itself is ancient feeling. My sister lives in Leith, the docks area. If you’re familiar with the movie Trainspotting, that’s the place in Edinburgh they mean. However in recent years, its undergoing massive gentrification. And probably if the current economic crisis hadn’t hit, it would be well on its way to what happened to Venice. My sister owns a wee shop in the part of Leith that’s showing signs of gentrification-new apartment buildings, young hip kids going to work, and artsy fartsy galleries and shops trying not to look cool, but too cool for school just the same. She sells healthy Panini’s, coffee, juices and fine wines and beers, catering to the young hip generation that’s money is starting to push out the old drug culture that Leith is so famous for. I’m very proud of her, for all the hard work she has put into it. However in the long run, I think she feels deep down; she doesn’t want to be a shop owner for her whole life. Plus mixing her anxiety-riddled mind with the stresses of small business has caused her nights of insomnia and panic attacks. Luckily she moved out of one of the not so nice neighborhoods in Leith, to another lovely flat which she’s house sitting for a few months. And thank god, because at her old flat people were being stabbed in the halls, or shooting heroin. Not to mention the 17 polish people who lived in the two-bedroom next door, and because they weren’t allowed to smoke inside smoked in the hallway. She miraculously sold this apartment to a Spanish couple, and moved out.

Anyway, I spent the one afternoon I had in Edinburgh just hanging out in my sister’s shop. Although I wish I had had more time to site see. Not only is the city gorgeous, but also everyone in Edinburgh is beautiful. I don’t recall looking at anyone and not being curious about how they became so freaking attractive. But I had been to Edinburgh before, and after my weeks worth of wandering around all the time or sitting in my families living rooms, all I wanted to do was sit down. Not to mention I had some gnarly blisters from my docmartin’s which I never re-broke in.

The Return-

The return journey was horrendous. We got lost multiple times dropping off the rental car, for British road signs suck ass. Then on the 8 hour flight to Chicago from London, two little devils dressed in child clothes screamed and jumped up and down the entire trip. They’re parents slept, they fucking slept through most of the whole thing, and when they were not sleeping, it was loves and kisses and no attempts to tell them to shut their traps. It was beyond unacceptable. When we landed in Chicago, they could not get the cargo door open because it had “frozen shut”, so we had to catch our next flight not knowing if our bags would make it. Luckily they did.

Now I’m at home, having written the second part of this travel journal from my desk almost a week after I landed. I had forgotten how utterly devastating jet lag can be. For the first few days, all I wanted to do was sleep. I’ve not had any appetite, or will to do much of anything until yesterday (when I went to the LA Auto Show). Jordan, missed me, I could tell. The first couple days were quite blissful. But alas this is not a journal about my LA life, for I have a lot more to write about that on another date.