desensitized
Originally written 05.12.2002.
last night rob, iain, anais, and i had a really unsettling experience, and one that i was surprised to have had in edinburgh and not in columbus. we were having a movie marathon. rob rented “the lost world” (lame) and i rented “the others” (cool, but not so much when you already know the twist – cheers tim). We set up rob’s computer monitor and speakers connected to my laptop in the common room so we could all watch the dvds in comfort. we were halfway through “the others” when we heard a girl screaming outside. at first we thought it was just somebody carrying on, as screaming tends to be commonplace around the student housing, but the screaming carried on enough for iain and i to go to the window. we looked out and heard some more shouts, and saw someone dash around the corner into the alley. soon we saw a bunch of people crowded around outside, and later the cops came. this seems really uncharacteristic for the area as it’s pretty well-lit and highly trafficked. and i never felt as though my sense of security in this city was false, as can sometimes be the case back in columbus. we’re still not sure exactly what happened. it could have been a mugging, rape, hit and run, who knows in the end? it’s just frightens me a bit that my first reaction, on hearing screaming, was to think “that’s someone fucking around” instead of “that’s someone who needs help”.
glamis
Originally written 05.12.2002.
yesterday i went on a bus trip with my study abroad program to go see glamis castle. i wasn’t too keen on going, but felt i should take advantage of the opportunity. glamis is up near dundee, so i at least got to see some of the scottish countryside and cross over the firth of forth. the castle was pleasant enough, and had been modified many times since it’s original conception as a hunting lodge. it is still the home of the bowes-lyon(sp?) family, who live in a wing of the castle not converted into a museum. the castle is famous, for one, because it is the setting of shakespeare’s macbeth, though historians suggest that shakespeare’s account is historically dubious and doubt that any of the action actually took place at glamis. it’s also unsure as to whether shakespeare had ever been to the castle himself. more recently, the castle is famed as the childhood home of the late queen mother. the thing that i was struck with more than anything by the castle was the utter lack of pretense. the collections of heirlooms seemed jumbled and like those of any family, though certainly more valuable. poorly painted paintings; ridiculous displays of stuffed game, arranged together in glass cases depicting scenes that would never occur in nature; and just tons of miscellaneous memorabilia from the ages. the whole place gave me a sense of the demise of royalty and heraldry. everything was so normal, so homey. outside the garden, there was even the graveyard for family pets. sure they had actual stone tombstones (i mistook them for human graves until i saw an epitaph that read “… our beloved guinea pig”), but it still seemed surprisingly normal. it was a beautiful sunny day, and after i took the tour of the castle, i sat in the italian garden and read some d.h. lawrence. i really don’t like his stories. he creates interesting enough characters, but seem to have little need for plot development. the last short fiction collection i read was 9 stories by salinger, and salinger is able to somehow craft scenes of intimate human interaction that are engaging in a way that lawrence’s just aren’t. sitting in the garden too, made me think that the castle, and the institution that it represents, was slowly decaying. the flowers were fresh, but some of the leaves of the trees were going brown, and the garden seemed cold and isolated inside it’s aging walls.