These Days
These are the days I don’t think I can.
These are the days I must.
the endless ascent of ben wyvis
Posts tagged ‘scotland’
Feb 18
54 Comments
Oct 16
Will It Swim?
It floats.
Sometimes up……..sometimes down.
A thin tube of scientific glass. A single sheet of paper. The scribblings of a little girl, long grown.
On the foam, it rides.
Underneath, currents shake it.
Riding and shaking. Rising and falling. It isn’t aware of the years passing by. It only knows the motion, the meandering of its fragile little life.
In the mud, it finds itself, face buried by the tide. It cannot see the spires, the undulating architecture that lead to craggy rocks, a jagged cliff along the skyline. The ancient castle that seems to grow from the rock, standing sentry over everything in sight. Watching it squirm with the ebb and flow of frigid water.
Icy, flawless water of the firth.
It feels another beat, one not borne by liquid. Vibrations litter its surface, caress its glassy sides. More and more it feels the otherworldly beat, the cadence that isn’t of the sea that flung it there.
Light.
A tearing about the neck.
Squealing brogue that reads the blistered paper, dated years ago, when another little girl, also nine, flung it into the ocean, thinking it might swim. Hoping another curious child would find her message, would reinvent her childhood, would whisper thank you on the wind.
Sep 27
She Likes to Play Golf……Anne Howe!
Anne Howe likes to play golf. Imagine that today she finds herself in a coveted slot on Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course. Let’s hope our spying on her game doesn’t cause her to be too many strokes over par………….
If I could just be in Charleston instead of Michigan, I could play here all the time. Okay, well, maybe sometimes. Okay, a couple of times a year. I practically had to sell one of my daughters to get in this place. I wish someone were here with me. No one will believe I am TEN STROKES under par.
ANNE!
What? Don’t bother me right now. I’m in the middle of the game of my life on the course to end all courses. You’re messing up my mojo.
ANNE HOWE!!!
Why do you keep talking to me? Wait………WHO is talking to me? God, I knew I shouldn’t have had that extra glass of wine……….
ANNE…..
All right already! You’ve got my attention, screaming my name from some unseen place. You can come out now.
NO, I CAN’T. YOU MUST COME IN.
Come in? Uh-uh. I’m sinking putts I only dreamed about before. I even got a hole in one.
THAT’S WHY YOU MUST COME IN.
What??? A hole in one means I must come in? Is that what you’re saying? They don’t let people play through in this place when they get a hole in one?
YOU MISUNDERSTAND ME. YOU MUST COME IN. TO THE HOLE.
I really shouldn’t have had that extra glass of wine………
ANNE, DO YOU THINK PEOPLE COME HERE TO HIT A BALL?
Um, yeah. That’s what everyone seems to be doing.
NONSENSE. THOSE ARE THE UN-INITIATED. THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE WARPED HOLES.
That sounds like a perversion…..Warped Holes……..will you please leave me alone and let me finish my game?
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE WARPED HOLES ARE THE REASON PEOPLE REALLY PLAY GOLF. COURSES LIKE THIS ONE REPRESENT CRACKS IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM. PEOPLE PAY BIG BUCKS TO JUMP DOWN HOLES AND END UP WHEREVER THEY PREFER SPENDING THE DAY – THE PLAYBOY MANSION, PERHAPS, OR A PRIVATE SCOTCH TASTING IN SCOTLAND, OR IN UNDETECTABLE ADULTEROUS LIAISONS. JUMPING IN THE HOLE CAN TAKE YOU ANYWHERE.
But, I don’t want to go anywhere else. Charleston is where I want to be. I spend as much time here as I possibly can.
I KNOW, ANNE. THAT’S WHY YOUR FIRST TASTE OF WARPED HOLES WILL SHOW YOU A PART OF CHARLESTON ONLY LOCALS FIND.
Really? You mean, I can be a Warp Holer right here? In Charleston?
YES!!!!!!!!!! JUST WAVE YOUR TOE OVER THE HOLE………..
Zip-zap-bloop-glurg-blonk-gork-slurp-boinketyboinketyboink.
I wonder how I can help package this concept to sell it. Think of the impact on the golf industry if more people knew they could experience hyperspace just by playing more golf! Hello? Are you still there?
SILENCE.
Okay, here goes. I’m going to plod up these steps and push open this heavy door and – ohmigod, I’m in a graveyard!? Why did you send me to a graveyard?
MORE SILENCE.
Magnolia Cemetery. And I’m alone. With, like, 595 graves. Is this going to turn into some sort of young adult paranormal fantasy love story next?? Am I going to fight with a zombie? Or be captured by vampires who can’t get along with werewolves?
STILL MORE SILENCE.
It’s quiet here. Peaceful actually. Hmmmmmm……..all right. I’m going exploring.
Read more about Anne Howe at her awesome blog on shopper marketing here, and follow her on Twitter @ShopperAnnie. For the number of posts written by the Cootchie Mama, she guessed 595. Tune in tomorrow for another whacked tribute to a runner-up. Winner to be announced later this week.
Dec 12
Just Like Honey
I feel officially illiterate. After a week of having a Spanish speaking person living in my house, I have experienced the frustration of being Lost in Translation full on. I can say ‘no mas’ and ‘buenos dias’ and ‘hola’ and that’s about it. Pretty pathetic.
So, on Saturday night, we watched “Lost in Translation” with Meredith. Spanish subtitles were fully activated for her benefit, though it is awesome that Sophia Coppola chose not to translate the Japanese in the crucial parts, where we all needed to feel lost.
Keeping Meredith and Luis has been one of the hardest, and at the same time one of the most rewarding, things I’ve ever done. I’m glad he’s doing even better than expected. He had his sutures removed on Thursday, and his final appointment is coming up this week. If all goes well, he and Meredith could be back in Panama in time for Christmas.
It’s been a day of circular references to bees and hives. We stopped off to see my virtual-niece Cayleigh and give her some pretzels earlier, and she’s doing a third grade family tree project. Only, she’s turned hers into a beehive. She mapped the whole thing out on the floor for me, complete with little bees that she drew to illustrate her family from Scotland.
Which circles back to the title of this post. It ends the movie “Lost in Translation,” but it’s a Scottish band called The Jesus and Mary Chain. They look so comforting to me, being a teenager of the 1980′s. The hairdos are simply inspired.
They make me want to be a plastic toy for the holidays.
Disfrute!
Jun 24
There’s No Crying in Baseball
With these words, I descended from the precarious top of Ben Wyvis. I’m surprised I’m not still stuck up there.
Let me preface this post by admitting that I know virtually nothing about geography in Scotland. Planning hiking excursions quickly became an exercise in the overwhelming, as I scrolled through route after route, oblivious as to whether or not any of them were remotely close to where I would be staying.
Apparently, I also know virtually nothing about the metric system. Once we decided upon Inverness as a Highland base, I quickly chose Ben Wyvis. At 935 meters, I thought it wouldn’t be too challenging for us. Of course, I did not convert that into over 3,000 feet of ascension almost vertically up the side of a rock.
As we progressed through a valley with a trickling, peaty stream running next to it, I was practically pregnant with smugness. Picking this hike – never mind that we were virtually the only two souls on it – had to be the coup de grace of my hiking choices. It was so Scottish that I expected Mel Gibson in blue face and men in kilts blowing bagpipes at every turn. (The kilts link is worth it.)
Until we started up. While the stairs likely numbered in the hundreds, it felt like at least one million. Determined, we pressed on, as we encountered four false summits, the last of which almost made me scream expletives into the screeching frozen gale that howled around us constantly at that height.
Finally, we reached the summit. The views were breathtaking, both because of how sweepingly barren they were and because of how freaking cold it was. I didn’t want to leave, because going down is harder for me than going up. I don’t like seeing how far I can fall, and I am still not particularly fond of heights, regardless of how much I’ve forced myself to confront them.
When we hiked Mount Mansfield (2600 foot elevation gain), I cried at least five times, falling down three times on the avalanche shute descent that my husband chose. At Grandview Trail in Grand Canyon (2600 foot elevation gain), it took me longer to get down the stupid mining trail than it did to get back out. Only three crying jags on that one.
Coming down Ben Wyvis, with its scary uneven steps and cliff features, I chanted “There’s no crying in baseball” until my husband probably wanted to clock me. But, I made it up and down without crying. At 3,431 feet of elevation gain, it is the hardest hike I’ve ever done, and it is probably best that I did it in complete stupidity.
