Writing on a Monday

It hailed, sleeted, rained and snowed much of today.

The waves were frighteningly huge.

This was the same spot yesterday. It was calm and clear, and a large ship moved along the horizon.

Cobblestones by the sea yesterday.

I'm thinking about creating a seperate writing blog at some point. I'm not sure if I could quite fill it or even write in it on a weekly basis as things pick up next fall and spring, but I've been so inspired by the writing I've done and been exposed to at St. Andrews that I feel it's the natural next step. I think too, any artist, whether musician, writer or performer needs to engage in a fair amount of self-promotion to enter an already crowded field. I really like writing. More and more each week. I'm writing this now in the library, my fingers typing slowly, still numb from the freezing rain outdoors. More than ever before though, thoughts, phrases, words and sentences come to me and need to be recorded, written, expressed somewhere immediately. This happens more and more each week and month. While I expect and plan to have a day job in the coming years, I want to still find time and energy to write down these words. Thinking about myself a year ago, this change and discovery has come so suddenly. I don't know the right steps to take, the right way or the right plans to pursue. I know next year I'll be busy, and it might be swept aside. I wonder partly, if the free time I've had here has helped me discover it and work towards it. I don't know. I want it to continue though.

Last night I met up with Miriam, one of my closest friends here. We went out for a drink and I discovered that St. Patrick's day is not at all celebrated in eastern Scotland. Miriam mentioned Glasgow and the gaelic areas of western Scotland celebrating it more. We had a quiet and rainy Sunday night in a small University town on spring break. Later, we found ourselves muching on Turkish food and discussing UK and US politics in the student pub.

This morning I journeyed through the rain and hail to the School of English to pick up my recent American poetry essay and found myself stocking up on free literary magazines there for my plane trips tomorrow to read along with Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns which I'm looking forward to beginning. I read T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land this morning for the first time while in the School of English and despite it being a very symbolic and slightly strange poem, I enjoyed it. I recorded a few of my favorite lines as:
'I will show you fear in a handful of dust.'
'Unreal city, under the brown fog of a winter dawn'
'At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives.'
'Of thunder of spring over distant mountains.'
'In this decayed hole among the mountains.'
'In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing.'

This afternoon, I ventured to Our Story, a St. Andrews cafe that opened earlier this month. A few of my friends work there and the café's incorporation of philanthropy to international service organizations, artwork, writing, and delicious sandwiches and drinks has made it to be my type of cafe. I ran into my friend Lydia there from my Creative Writing course last fall. Lydia is an abroad student as well, and attends Sarah Lawrence College in the States. We've spoken before about writing, and she's been kind to refer me to several pieces written by her Creative Writing professors in the U.S. or pieces that have particularly interested her. We sat for nearly two hours in the cafe this afternoon, talking about music, books, writing, Wyoming, and Northfield, Vermont, where I'll be living this summer and where a friend of her's lives. We were given free cappuccinos by the café and I bought a sandwich to eat later. After leaving, I bought soap and mailed a few birthday cards and postcards.

Later, as I left the library and planned to complete the last of my packing - the dreaded part, the liquids. The squeezing of shampoo and soap into small plastic bottles...I imagined the glycerin spilling onto my hands and into the plastic bags - I noticed an illustration of a house near the exit of the library. A stone two-story house that reminded me of my ninth grade art class in which I undertook a series of sketching Victorian homes. I sketched the homes throughout the semester, and chose bright orange as the main color for the homes. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And perhaps someday it will seem so again.