A Single Layer

Yesterday we went to the Isle of May where dwell the puffins and enough lighthouses to satisfy even my eagerness for those beacons of safety, those harbingers of harbour. Here are some photos: View from the bus on the way there. These yellow fields are everywhere, filling the heart with the joy that only a field of yellow can give. The May Princess, our unweildy ferry. You'd think a ride in this thing would be enough to turn the stomach - but the worse for my insides was the work of award-winning fish and chips consumed on the rocky Stagecoach back to the city. Twenty-four hours later, I still have the bucket by my bed just in case. The Isle of May - one of the only semi-level photos I have of it from the view of the ferry. This photo was taken by flatmate Lindsay, who has offered her camera countless times to the service of my pictoral memory. I believe what you see in the distance is the south-end lighthouse perched atop the forbidden segment of island upon which the seabirds are...

The trees are blooming. And those that aren't display leaves of such tender green I want to eat them and touch them and eat them some more. (I am trying not to.) In order more fully to glory in the season, flatmate Courtney and I took the long trek to Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden this afternoon. Here's a link for the curious: http://www.rbge.org.uk/ It was one of the more beautiful gardens of my experience, vast and varied, full of endless delights. We strolled about the grounds and took as many pictures as we could in fairy-like poses, faces framed by drooping branches. After we had seen all that we could bear to see without wanting to pick all the flowers, swim in all the ponds, and build forts in every tree, we dropped down on a small grassy hill to rest. I know it is all a well-planted, well-landscaped, highly organized garden, but it does help one to understand the poets of seasons and flowers and such. Nature is restorative, Wordsworth. Or it can be. Here are some...

I am sitting here with my favorite cereal (Pecan and Maple Crunch, courtesy of Sainsbury's) thinking about the events of yesterday. After church, which I was actually on time for, I met some friends at my flat and we headed to Craigmillar Castle. This great ediface of history and tourism is apparently just down the street from where I live - a fact I was not aware of until a few days ago. Yes, yes, I know. I've been here nearly eight months and didn't know there was a castle down the road. In my defense, we had to wander through a lot of woodland (or a 'wood stand' as my agriculture-environment majoring flatmate calls it in her well-informed way) and some field before we finally saw it, cresting a hill, overlooking some cows. Here are a few photos, some of which were taken by me and some by friend Sarah: on our way to the castle - lots of green a fuzzy view of some edinburgh from the hill ascending to... the castle! ignore the cars, and you can almost sense what Mar...

Having recently been viewing a British history documentary (Simon Schama's series for BBC) in which the events of Henry VIII's schismatic escapades and their ensuing catastrophes are well narrated, the nature of the Church during the Reformation has been on my mind. At the same time (or rather, in the last hour or so) I have been reviewing some of my favorite British Renaissance/Reformation poets in order to put together a proper PhD proposal for this Swiss programme I'm considering. And in the process, I came across this poem of Donne's which I had either completely forgotten or never read. It seems to hit upon some of the very sentiments I have been having in the last... three days... and with a voice straight from the midst of it all. It is the eighteenth of his Holy Sonnets, and I have transcribed it here: Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear. What! is it she which on the other shore Goes richly painted? or which, robbed and tore, Laments and mourns...

Here's a confession: I don't like the word 'Easter'. Maybe because it so often comes before words like 'basket' and 'bunny', it has lost the reverberated soundings of stones rolling over Jerusalem soil, chattering teeth of centurions (doubtless losing bladder control), and the ear-splitting echoes of the feet of angels shuffling about the tomb floor. I cannot catch any wiffs of death or decay in the word, neither the smell of dry blood or the noxious odour of too-much myrrh in an enclosed space, let loose with the breaking of the dawn and the sudden open space that was - and is no longer - a grave. Oddly enough, arriving in church this morning in my kelly green dress and springtime shoes, I quickly noticed that most people in the congregation were still wearing the dark colours of Good Friday (or any other day of the British winter). Did they not get the message? Were they not aware that this is a day for brightness and cheer, for celebration, hoorah, an...