A Flight Deferred

America, how dare you make me miss you?

August is so far away. It'll be eight months before I can have a chicken biscuit from Bojangles, or grits, or a disgustingly greasy double cheeseburger. Eight months away from open highways and the local classic rock station. Eight months until I'm greeted with a smile and a hey y'all at every register I walk up to. Eight months until I see the other side of 70 degrees.

I know that's all North Carolina centric, but I think the familiarity of home is what I'm going to miss. That seems obvious, I know. Other than your friends and family, you miss the things that you're accustomed to. You miss knowing where everything is and how the food is going to taste and how the people are going to sound. You miss your favorite soda or beer or snack. You miss your normal.

But me, I'm pretty good at adapting to new situations, making the life I'm living my new normal. I don't really think about how uncomfortable or inconvenienced or abnormal I feel until I'm out of the situation. Until I come home.

And now, I'm staring down months of being the outsider again. Months of sounding different from the norm, of using the wrong words for things, of making witty references that don't land because we don't exactly have the same shared cultural experience. And that's with being in a country whose language is basically the same as mine and whose people are generally inclined to like people like me-

Hang on, I have to go deal with an airplane.

***

Okay, nobody panic- my plane was struck by lightning but I wasn't on it at the time and now I'm rebooked on a better flight than I had before and am thankful that I'm not one of the people I see sprinting across the airport as I sit with my Bojangles on a rocking chair under a tree in the Charlotte airport. Everything works out okay. Usually. 

If you didn't get to see my face while I was in America, I'm sorry, but never worry! I made a video (which serves the dual purpose of introducing the new Vlogyries team for 2016) and I've put it below. Here's to new flights and new years! 

Cross-post: The Wafer

Editor's Note: In honor of the holidays, I stopped paying attention to my schedule. I'll have a post again for you tomorrow and we'll be back to normal on Friday, but for today, enjoy a post on a parody blog I contribute to! The original post (along with our archive, which is quality) can be found here. 

ABANDONED CHRISTMAS TREES WONDER WHAT THEY DID TO DESERVE THIS

YOUR TOWN, USA- Across the nation this weekend, conscientious homeowners have begun un-decking their halls and un-trimming their trees. There's one problem though- Christmas has only just begun.

“It's a very common misconception,” said Mary Criss-Mast, an expert on the holiday season. “The twelve days of Christmas are actually the twelve days after Christmas, not before. The liturgical season begins with the birth of Christ. It's confusing, I know, but those trees should technically stay up until Epiphany. It's only humane. They deserve their full lifespan.”

Meanwhile, the trees left on the curb are crying out, for those with ears to hear.

“I... I thought you loved me,” stated a dazed five-foot blue spruce out on 2nd Avenue. “I held your ornaments. I thought it meant forever.”

“I was devastated when they chopped me down, but then I was welcomed into this new home. The old trees, they told me about this. They promised me months of life. Months. Until the Kings came. Now look at me,” moaned an eight-foot Douglas fir leaning up against the dumpster on Church Street.

“Mmmrrr mmm mmrwwmmm,” commented the six-foot white pine laying face-down on the corner of 12th and Washington.

“It's inhumane,” said local tree advocate, Phil Jones. “We told them they were Christmas trees, not Advent trees. We're breaking their hearts. We've lied to them.”

Jones was then seen to toss the white pine into the back of his pickup truck to take it to a nice farm upstate.

No Place Like Home for the Holidays

I've never flown during the holidays before. I now understand why no one ever wants to. Allow me to present to you "Dude, Where's My Plane: A Christmas Special." Brought to you by flight delays.

Tuesday, December 22nd

6:05am- Wake up dramatically from a dream involving essay grades and a chicken. Proceed to try unsuccessfully to fall asleep for three hours.

10:15am- Stumble to the elevator with the flat trash and a duffle bag. 

10:18am- Toss the trash into the dumpster and begin to get drenched by the rain on the walk to the airport bus.

11:10am- Arrive at Edinburgh International Airport. I’ve flown out of here before, but it was years ago and I’m convincing myself they’ve remodeled because the only thing that looks familiar is the international arrivals area that I waltzed into three months ago. I check in, I drop off my duffle bag, I go through security, and I find a place to wait for my flight to be assigned to a gate. Luckily, all I’ve got to carry around is my purse, which is no more packed than it would be on your average school day, so I’m pretty mobile.

1:53pm- My flight was supposed to leave at 2pm. Still haven’t been assigned a gate. Amuse myself by listening to the conversations around me and tweeting about them.

2:50pm- On the plane, really feeling the lack of sleep last night. The British girl beside me clearly has a cold and the poor dear orders tea the same time I order coffee. I pass her her tea and we cheers before going back to our own little worlds.

4:15pm- We land in London and I power walk to the connections board. Chicago isn’t listed, but there’s a sign that says that flights to the US are operated by AA and are at Terminal 3. I’m at Terminal 5. I walk very quickly to the terminal bus.

4:18pm- The bus driver waits for a group of 20 who arrived as the bus was supposed to leave to board. I’m counting the minutes between terminals. As long as the gate number is listed when I get to Terminal 3, I can still make it.

4:32pm- I follow the signs to the American Airlines desk, which is disconcertingly empty. I tell the man behind the desk that I’m looking for a connecting flight to Chicago and my heart drops when he shakes his head. Since it was a delay on a British Airways flight that caused the problem, he sends me to their counter. I do my best to keep all the crying on the inside.

5:04pm- After going through security again and waiting in line at the BA counter, I’m handed a new ticket for tomorrow morning, a set of vouchers for a hotel stay and shuttle services, and a toiletries bag. I ask how much I missed the flight by. The guy checks and winces at the screen. “No chance,” he says. “Even if you ran.”

Well, at least it’s not my fault. I take my purse (so "lucky" that I'm traveling light) and find my way out.

5:25pm- I text my mother from the airport exit, telling her what’s going on. I would have done that earlier, but I assumed that I could just pop through immigration. I was wrong. I get on the shuttle to the hotel and realize with a start that the bus door is on the opposite side of what I was expecting. All airports look like America to me. I had forgotten where I was.

6:15pm- Hello, my name is Addie Jo and it’s been 159 days since my last hotel stay. Thought maybe I’d make it a year, but apparently the fates had something else in mind. The routine formed by three years of traveling for work kicks in- I set my purse on the tile of the bathroom floor, check the mattress, drawers, and corners of the room for bedbugs, kick off my boots and fall backwards onto my bed. My glorious, free, king-sized bed. It’s funny- if it weren’t for the picture of Big Ben on the wall, I might think I was back in middle of nowhere North Carolina. My plans for the evening are about the same. I close my eyes for a few minutes. 

7:05pm- The airline comped me dinner, so I go to the hotel restaurant. I hand over my voucher and the hostess asks if we’re all sitting together. I walked in alone, so I turn around and find that there’s a group of twelve attractive British twenty-something males, every one of whom gives me the once-over as I smile and wave and tell the hostess that it’s just me. We all have a good-natured chuckle over it and I resist the urge to pump a fist in the air. 

7:11pm- I HAVE NEVER EATEN SO MUCH IN MY LIFE. I’ve been living off of ramen and left-overs for the past two weeks and this hotel buffet is exactly what I needed in my world right now. 

7:20pm- Oh my everything, this chocolate pie. I could die happy right now.

7:45pm- I would like to take this opportunity to thank British Airways for this toiletry bag. I take a longer shower than is necessary, using the razor and shaving cream to properly shave my legs since this is the most room I’ve had in months. There’s apparently one multi-purpose wash that’s supposed to work as shampoo, conditioner, and body wash and no washcloth in the hotel, but whatever man. We’re making this free stuff work. There’s even a t-shirt in the pack, so I can let my sweatshirt finally dry out from the rain that morning. 

9:30pm- I set my alarm for the next morning and settle in to bed. Dammit, Britain, ya skimped on the pillow top. This might be a princess and the pea situation, but I know a mid-priced hotel bed when I sleep in one and my friends, this is slightly substandard. 

Wednesday, December 23rd

5:58am- My alarm goes off. I left it charging across the room so I actually have to get out of bed.

5:59am- I go back to bed.

6:28am- I groggily get out of bed, “pack” (put my laptop and phone back in my purse), and “get ready” (put my jeans and shoes back on). 

6:33am- I hand over my key in the hotel lobby. Thanks for the free night, Park Inn by Radisson! 

7:01am- After getting my actual boarding pass, going through security again, and walking through the absurdly brightly lit stores at the airport, I sit down at the designated seating area and wonder if napping for two hours is worth it.

7:25am- Amazing how comfortable you can get if you just wedge yourself in sideways on these airport benches.

8:25am- My flight is supposed to be assigned a gate.

8:35am- Still hasn’t happened.

8:40am- COME ON, BRITAIN. 

8:52am- THERE IS BOJANGLES WAITING FOR ME. DO NOT STAND BETWEEN ME AND MY BOJANGLES.

9:00am- That’s it. I’m going to die here. They’ll find my body propped up just outside the Pret, covered in left over croissant wrappers. 

9:03am- Gate 1 it is.

10:30am- There's a technical problem with the plane and we can't board until it's fixed. My money's on the phalanges. 

gif source

10:47am- We're delayed until 12:30pm. Cue the general outrage. 

12:24pm- We're all just sitting at the terminal. Somehow I don't think we're taking off in 6 minutes. On the bright side, they did serve us snacks and water! 

Friday, December 25th

Sometime after 12:45am- We boarded the plane around 1pm London time on the 23rd and sat on the plane for hours while they removed luggage for passengers that had rebooked their flights after the delay. At least the booze on the flight was free. When we landed in Charlotte around 6:45pm local time, we sat on the runway for a while waiting for a gate. Then I went through customs and went to go find my checked bag, which was missing. But a friend of mine came and picked me up and I got the call around 4pm on the 24th that my bag would be delivered that evening. And it was. Sometime in the early hours of Christmas morning.

So that's my saga, friend! I was originally supposed to land in Charlotte, bag in hand, around 1am on the 23rd. But I'm home! And that, as my friend said, is a step in the right direction.

10 Tips For Living in a New Country

Moving to a new country is just like moving anyplace, really, except for the visa and the currency exchange and the difficulty of setting up a bank account and the work permit and the fact that you can be thrown out of the country at any point for violating a set of rules that you may or may not know about, depending on the amount of research you've done. Oh, and sometimes they don't have cheap Mexican food anymore.

If that last paragraph made you nervous, never fear! I'm here with some tips for making that transition as smooth as possible.

1. Have pre-existing friends in town. If at all possible, endeavor to have someone that you at the very least know by name live in the city that you're moving to who can come get you at the airport, ride the correct bus with you, and help carry your things to your new domicile. You will be unable to express your unending gratitude for their help, but that's just the way of things.
2. Read your visa fine-print. Like, I have to go to class and show up for a "census" every semester so they know I'm actually doing what I'm here to do and I can't work more than 20 hours a week. Know what they expect from you. 
3. Explore your neighborhood on Google Maps before arriving. Where's the nearest grocery store? Pharmacy? Supermarket equivalent? Clothing store? Bus stop? Google maps can tell you all of these things if you have your address in order. As you explore the neighborhood, you'll more than likely find better answers to all of these questions than the internet told you, but when you arrive, you're going to need food, toiletries, and access to local clothing so you can dull the amount of American-ness you exude and you'll feel much more comfortable if you have an idea of how far you're going to have to go to obtain these things.
1. Also look into the location of the nearest worship center if you're of a religious bent. You'll more than likely shop around for this too, but it's good to have a place to be on Sunday morning (or whenever). 
4. Figure out your phone situation. This is the 21st century. You have to have a cell phone. There will be opportunities that you will regret missing out on because you didn't have a phone. So just go to the phone store, which you will have looked up on google maps, and get yourself a SIM card or a new phone and join the ranks of the living again. 
5. Plan your first shopping trip. Think of this ahead of time so that your jet-lagged self can still make it happen. This trip will include items like:
1. TOILET PAPER. TOILET PAPER. TOILET PAPER. You will forget this and it will make you miserable, so just write it down at the top and repeat it to yourself at the store.
2. Shampoo, conditioner, body-cleaning stuff, razors, hand soap. Do your best to find the brands that feel like what you had before- it's good to smell the way you're used to smelling.
3. Bedding, towels, dishes, cutlery, cleaning supplies. (Laundry detergent is something you're going to forget to buy and laundry is important, so put it on the list.)
4. All your food basics, including salt, pepper, sugar, butter, and those other cooking essentials that you had in your previous cupboard but didn't carry across the ocean with you. 
6. Go to the bank. Just, as soon as you can, get that process started. If you're in a university town, go to a branch a little farther from campus. All those poor children are also trying to open their very first adult bank accounts and you don't need to wait through their lines.
7. Have a good friend come visit you. Another thing I know that's not always possible, but if the world gives you the means, bring a familiar face into your life. There's always skype/gchat/FaceTime, but those options are only a substitute for the real joy of being in someone's presence.
8. Keep busy. Keeping your mind occupied helps keep the realization of the absurdity of what you're doing at bay. Maybe for you that means getting a job or volunteering or getting involved in an organization outside of school/work or planning travel, but whatever it is, fill up your days. Even if you're not a people person, getting out of the house and meeting people is the best way to go about your first few months anywhere. Say yes to everything until you're settled enough to start saying no again. 
9. Allow yourself to break down too. As much as you'll want to land on your feet and hit the ground running and all of that stuff, acknowledge to yourself if to no one else that this is a big step. It's hard on a body, regardless of who you are. So on that third Thursday afternoon in town when you're struggling through this visa problem or that application difficulty or you've collapsed to the ground because you can't remember your address even though you've lived here for almost a month, just take the time and set down that weight that you've been carrying and order pizza. It'll be good for you, I promise.
10. Make an accent decision. Are you going to try to assimilate by using the local slang and speech patterns or are you going to hold true to the words you're used to? I think an argument can actually be made for either, especially if you're going to sound like an idiot trying to sound like the people around you. I'm personally a fan of the slow assimilation of common phrases, but, as I've been told, it's all a matter of how much you want to stand out. Cheers.

Bonus tip: Make a budget and then stop looking at the exchange rate because it'll just make you sad. Just, so sad. 

A Selfie Tour of Edinburgh

I have a well-documented hate-hate relationship with selfies. Be about them if you want, but to me, it's an unnecessary exertion of my facial muscles for a fleeting documentation of a moment that could have passed quietly into the recesses of memory without any detrimental effects on my future life. But sometimes you have to take a selfie tour of the place that you live in order to convince a friend to come visit and decide that it was too good of an effort to share with anything less than the entire world via the internet. So, without further ado, take a tour around town with me!

We'll start just down the road from my flat, where we have Holyrood Palace...

Scottish Parliament...

and Arthur's Seat.

Okay, not me and not a selfie, but come on. This picture is amazing. 

Heading back east towards town, you've got Cowgate...

a lovely little pub on Candlemaker Row...

a fossil shop...

Grassmarket...

 this bookstore...

 this eatery that has everything you'll ever need....

 this cat that I met in the window of Scotland's first cat cafe...

 and a suit of armor I found.

Taking a detour west to the George IV bridge, we've got a joke shop...

Victoria Street...

Decked out for the holidays.

 my favorite pub in town...

this other bookshop...

Greyfriars Bobby...

 the Elephant House, the "birthplace of Harry Potter"...

 and this Irish pub (towards the George Square campus).

Turn back the way you came and you'll end up on the Royal Mile, where you can find whisky...

 St. Giles...

 stores selling an absurd amount of plaid...

 this sad fountain...

 this happy fountain...

 and one of many closes in town.

If you walk down this particular close, you'll end up on the Mound, where you can see New College...

 and the Museum on the Mound, with its punny signs.

This time of year, you could walk over to Princes Street, decked out for the season...

and of course, if you go up Mound Place, you end up at the castle.

I'd hate to make the castle play second fiddle to me in a picture.

We're clearly done taking all the pictures of me that I need to take, so let's walk back down the Mile...

and if we've got the energy, back down to Arthur's Seat and to take another look back out at the town we've just walked 'round.

Pretty fantastic, yeah? Who wouldn't want to come visit all this?

To the Pluto Jerk

A couple of weeks ago, when the New Horizons team was releasing some of the images of Pluto’s surface taken during the flyby, I was scrolling through the articles about it on the Facebook news part of facebook, and I see this comment:

In case it’s hard to read, it says: 

“oh.. I see lines… obviously aliens live there… we dont know what caused it.. so we shall just make sh** up….. thats what we do right.. just make sh** up for that which we dont understand??? Oh.. wait.. thats religion.”

Now, I’m not sure what this person is responding to. It might be that there were people who believe in alien life advocating for their cause earlier in the comment thread. I didn’t care to scroll up and see that. But I had a very visceral reaction to this comment. What I want to do now is sit down with this commenter and engage him in a thoughtful discussion about the nature of scientific discovery and purpose of religious beliefs and maybe casually mention that that’s not how you use ellipses. What I wanted to do at the time was smash all of his fingers and rip out his tongue so that he could no longer be a part of this conversation. 

Let me explain why. Let me say what I would have said to this commentator, given the opportunity and the space. 

We sent a probe four billion miles away to take pictures of an object that, prior to this mission, had been at best a pixelated blur. We, tiny little humans on a tiny little rock floating in vast emptiness of space, endeavored to send a tiny little machine to explore for us. The trip alone took nine years to complete- can you imagine the work hours that went into dreaming up this project, getting it funded, planning, designing, redesigning, building, engineering, and testing the project, all before launch? Do you have an idea of the amount of work it’ll take to process these images, all the data this probe is sending back to us? We are doing things generations before us wouldn’t have even been able to dream of. More than any other generation, we are able to delight and wonder and reap the benefits of scientific exploration. 

The New Horizons team did not do all that work so that you could use it to make a cheap jab at religion, dear Internet Commentator. We have not dared to dream about the distant reaches of our solar system so that jerks like you could jump up on a soapbox to tear humanity apart. Your punctuation-challenged words speak nothing of the good that has been achieved in this world. They only serve as an example of the useless rhetoric that has been bandied around for centuries that deepens divides between people. You are not saying anything new, you are not saying anything useful, and you articulate your ideas poorly. 

Here was a moment where we could all come together and marvel at the human experience. Think about it. Kids even a year from now in school who are learning about Pluto for the first time will experience it as that one dwarf planet with the heart on it, just like they’ll learn about Saturn as that one planet with rings around it or Jupiter as that one planet with the big spot on it. They’ll learn about its mountains and formations on its surface. They'll have a discussion about classification systems and make decisions for themselves as to whether it should be a planet or a dwarf planet. Third graders will be more educated about the universe they live in than you ever were when you went through school. That is the power of scientific discovery and the information-sharing that the internet provides. The next generation gets a leg up, starts out a step ahead on our species’ path to knowledge.

Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

And you chose to ruin that with partisan fighting. You chose to mock others for what they believe. Yes, it has to be acknowledged that religious belief has the ability to shut out logical explanations for belief, but so does every other belief system. As you rightly point out, the people who believe that aliens are the best explanation for the lines on the surface of a dwarf planet are more than likely incorrect and are using a thought process built on faulty logic to come to their conclusions. Religion does not have the market cornered on “making things up.”

Allow me to let you in on a little secret: scientists aren’t always logical when it comes to their belief systems either. Though science sets out at the beginning with the purpose of understanding the world through empirical facts and reason, you can make data say a lot of things and the conclusions drawn from data can be just as unreasonable as you would deem faith in God to be. Science can get explanations wrong in its endeavor to understand. Scientists can draw misguided conclusions, same as everyone else. Science only grants superhuman understanding in comic books.

Be careful in your selection of your deities, my friend, and in your moderation of your beliefs. Do not assume that you know better than somebody else because of your belief in empiricism and induction. It may well be that there are instances in life in which science fails us and we are left without the explanatory power we think we have built on our own. I would implore you to act with a modicum of humility and basic human empathy, rather than demonizing a substantial percentage of humanity. Your inability to find value in a particular human construct is not indicative of the lack of value in that construct. I would submit that it shows only that you aren't capable of imagining people complexly. 

You, good Internet Commentator, are part of the problem, not the solution. The solution lies in the our struggle reconcile the truth that we have known with the truths that we are coming to know and removing someone else's truth from the discussion because it clashes with your own is not the mark of free-thinking. It's prejudice and it's just as damaging as the "religion" you decry.

Or, in the parlance of modern electronic communication: Check your life and your choices, asshat. 

Just a Little Homesick

I don't have much for today, other than missing the Carolinas. I'm leaning up against the radiator, the warmest I've felt in months, remembering days of insufferable heat and feeling a weird nostalgia for them, listening to the Avett Brothers and leaning into the sound for the first time in months, missing my car and the freedom it gave me, blaring music down deserted mountain roads and coastal highways. If I press up against the radiator close enough, I'll be back on Jockey's Ridge, getting sunburnt flying kites, or on Harbor Island walking across the low tide landscape, or in Charleston listening to In The Curve for the first time, or on the practice field in Chapel Hill in August, or walking to Franklin Street for lunch on an unbearable summer afternoon, or sitting behind the blocks, waiting for my event at the swim team conference meet, eight and tiny and unsure of how to feel about the big wide world in front of me.

It's funny, 'cause I know that I have memories of cold moments, shivering in the tiny church in Hillsborough before the handbell concert or sledding on cardboard sleds or in the parking lot at South Caldwell when my first inherited car died in the parking lot in the snow or in my car on the way to Orange High School when I was student teaching and the heating wouldn't turn on until the coolant temperature was 171 at least. But here, right now, all I want is to be warm and to think of the summers I've had, fireflies dancing a couple of feet above the grass and cicadas singing their songs.

Throwback Wednesday: Churches, Or Something

(I backpacked through Europe for a couple of months after college and I kept a blog the whole way. At the end of a semester in Edinburgh, I figured it'd be interesting to look back and who I was when I was here four years ago. You can find the original post here. Click through the archive for all sorts of pictures of churches and some stories. I recommend Italy and Spain if you're feeling cold.)

On my last night in Edinburgh, I went to go see a comedian with Christine, Kerry, and a couple of people from the hostel. Being of Scottish heritage but born in Canada and currently residing in England, he had a, shall we say, unique perspective on the different societies that he had viewed. He was hilarious and I laughed so hard that I cried throughout much of the show. Just one of the positives of visiting Edinburgh during the Fringe Fest- the place was full of comedy, plays and other performing arts. The comedian remarked that arriving in Edinburgh is much more impressive when one arrived by train in Waverly Station. You get off the train and there are bagpipes and people dressed up for performances and tourists galore and then there's this castle- you're generally a little overwhelmed when you get off the train in Edinburgh.

I loved it there, despite the rain and cold that I will almost incessantly complain about when I talk about the city, having become very homesick for heat that hits you like a wall of boiling air and humidity, and near drought conditions. Neil Gaiman stuck it into my head that Oscar Wilde once said that if this is how the Scots treat their summers, they don't deserve one. I don't know that the Scots must have done to offend summer so, but the entire time I was there it felt more like January of perhaps a cold snap in March than early August.

Still, the hostel I was at was small and full of interesting, friends people. On my second night a group of four came in from London and I spent many of my nights listening to their conversations and easy friendship. As wonderful as it was to find new people to be friends with, that wonderfulness was exceeded by having more familiar faces to enjoy the city with. Christine returned from her visit with her family in Ireland and brought Kerry, a friend of hers and an acquaintance of mine, with her from the independent island off the British coast. Her friend Jesse also came to visit, taking the bus up from London where he had been studying this summer.

Together we took a walking tour of Edinburgh that I highly recommend if you have the means. We listened to the history of Scotland as told through the lens of its capital, walking up and down the Royal Mile, stopping by  the outside of the cathedral, John Knox's grave, the Grassmarket, Greyfriars Kirkyard, home to Greyfriars Bobby, walking past Fringe venues and ending up in the Princes Street Gardens. Did you know that James Clerk Maxwell was a Scotsman? Good, because if you did it would probably be because you learned his equations in E&M and I would fear for your state after enduring the merciless tyranny of physics. But there are plenty of other notable Scotsman besides William Wallace- Robert Burns, Ewan McGregor, Sean Connery, David Hume, Adam Smith, the father of modern economics. JK Rowling has a small castle up there. I have also visited the Elephant Room, the café where she wrote the first three books of Harry Potter. Nerd moment of the trip completed.

I went back to the cathedral on my own for the Sunday morning service, taking communion in a huge circle by passing the loaf of bread and the cup of wine, each eating and drinking on their own before being blessed as a group by the priest. The choir sang an anthem, little bags were passed around for the offering, the priest preached a sermon on a letter of Paul and a gospel lesson about Jesus walking on water and Simon Peter sinking. Later, as I walked around, I noticed the lion and the unicorn protecting a shield as I'm used to seeing in Scotland and thistles in the decorations, proclaiming the national symbol of Scotland. 

The cathedral was interesting and historical. It was laid out in a Greek cross, the first church I had visited like that, and the altar stood at the intersection of the arms of the cross with the congregation on either side coming together for communion. It's a different kind of space and coming forward for communion made me think about the service back in St. Mary's in Berlin, passing the peace to people whose language I didn't speak. Here, I walked to the heart of the church and circled around the altar and smiled and shook hands with kind Scots and thought about how far I'd been.

The last thing I did in Edinburgh was climb Arthur's Seat. It's a huge hill on the edge of town, a touch of the highlands for which my heart ached. We had climbed it earlier, Christine, Kerry, Jesse and I, and we had stopped by the small ruin of a chapel near the beginning of the climb. 

There's not much left of this chapel, just and entry way, two windows, an arch support and a couple of corners, but the space lends itself to an absolutely mystical quality. You can rebuilt the chapel in your mind and imagine the monks who must have come here, lighting torches or candles for late night vigils. The crag around you minds you of a faerie world where sprites and nymphs could come and infest the stone of a place meant for Someone else, packing the place with a meaning all to different from the one you're accustomed to assume. And if you let your thoughts run wild you can imagine a day when we've all but left these places, these cities and these cathedrals, when the grass will grow again in the wind-deposited dirt and the walls of all of these grand houses of God that I've seen time and again in my months abroad will be reduced to a doorway, two windows and a corner, blackbirds racing each other around the ruins.

I didn't revisit the chapel on my solitary hike up and we didn't stay long as a crew the first climb up. We were beat up the hill by a trio of middle aged men determined to scale the mountain quicker than the college kids in their prime. We stopped often to take pictures and be distracted by a man walking his cat along the heath at the bottom of the valley. We paused just before the final trek up to the rocky peak, collapsing on the oddly-well maintained grass to guess at the shapes hidden in the clouds, watching as the high wind demolished them, leaving us with new patterns. I paused to look out again at the sea the sneaks into Edinburgh when I climbed by myself, but only for the briefest of seconds before picking out another path among the rocks.

The climb up to the top of the seat is up uncovered rock, different from the steep slope of grass that came before. As a group we laughed, first following the chains and posts and then guessing at the easiest climb before stumbling up to the open vista of the crown of the hill. I meandered around when I returned by myself, not pausing at the top but instead selecting a hidden outcropping to sit and think and read. Leaves of Grass lay abandoned in the pocket of my pack. I broke out a collection of stories by Neil Gaiman and immersed myself in a world of wonder, feeling the wind blow my hair around for the last time. When we four had climbed the seat, we had found our way around to the tops of the rocks, laughing and taking pictures and waiting for a group of Spanish-speaking tourists to give up their place on the highest before giving up and climbing up there anyway, crowding around the back of the dulled peak of peaks.

I left the last of my locks on a iron hook up on Arthur's Seat, the hefty one I had bought for five euro in Paris. I hadn't needed it in the hostel and wouldn't need it for our one night in Dublin before flying from there to Chicago to Charlotte. I can remember the jokes the group told as we picked our way down the rocks and flew down the hill before, but as I walked back by myself I turned a corner I hadn't seen before and walked down a stair step of rocks and trickling water. I walked through grass and by thistles, purple and green and perfect as I tugged my jacket closer against the wind.

On our way out of the city the next morning we sat on the top of the double-decker bus to the Edinburgh airport and Kerry cut off the conversation for a few moments so she could say her goodbyes to Edinburgh. I had been woken up that morning by a goodbye- Brooke, the Australian nurse from my room, had left the hostel group early to get on a plane for a night in London, despite the riots, before leaving out on a tour of the continent. We had said multiple goodbyes to the people in the hostel before walking in the rain to the bus station. Through all of this, I had never thought of saying goodbye to the city. Faced with the thought of leaving, I found my mind distracting itself from the idea. I don't do goodbyes. I was glad when Kerry finished hers and Christine and I discussed plans for surprising Pam when we returned to the States for her birthday.

I sat in an aisle seat on the plane. Given a window, I'll stare out at the ground, memorizing the place I've been from the air before it disappears in the clouds. With that moment taken away, I think I'll keep long montage of pictures taken from the upper floors of castles and cathedrals and hills looking over the cities I've seen in my mind as my memorization of Europe. I'll begin in Prague and I'll end at Arthur's Seat and I'll think of all the things I've left. And all the things I've gained.

Composure

I'm a bigger fan of taking random Facebook quizzes than I should be and because I'm ashamed of this fact, I tend to not share the results. I'm not 14. But then this happened:

What I'm most upset about with this is that it nailed on the head what I wanted it to say. I am very happy erring on the side of determination and perfection, with a little more than a dash of altruism. And I want to be "great at solving potential conflicts before they fully develop." It's weirdly specifically about me, or about who I want to be, which is what Facebook is for, right? For presenting the version of ourselves we want others to see? 

Listen, I'm not saying that my perception of myself was changed by the results of a facebook profile analyzing tool. I'm just not not saying it either. 

Hiya! I wanted to take a quick second to say thanks to everyone who came along and read my post about my tattoo- apparently that's how you get more than a hundred people to read your writing. Thank goodness I've got so much skin left to ink! I'll be famous in no time! (Just kidding, Mother.)

Anyway, thanks again, dear readers!

I found this adorable gif here.

A Tattoo Story

I got a new tattoo. People have been asking about it, so I figured I'd explain. It's on my forearm and it looks like this:

I'd have flexed or something, but honestly, this is as attractive as a forearm can be. 

Yes, that's my handwriting. I couldn't find a font that I liked that got the spacing right without weird letter size manipulations and, anyway, if you know the story of the quote, it makes sense that it's handwritten. The tattoo artist asked me if it was something I wrote, actually, and I had to tell him no, it's from V for Vendetta.

Have you seen V for Vendetta? If yes, you can skip this paragraph. If no, either go watch it and come back or read this paragraph and call it day, because I don't want to spoil the movie for you. Basically, there's a character in the movie that could have chosen bitterness and despair but instead focuses on the goodness in life. And I liked that a lot. My tattoo is a reminder to me to believe in goodness. Thanks for reading! I hope you get some goodness in your day today, like getting to pet a puppy, if petting a puppy is a thing you like doing!

gif found here

Okay, now that it's just us movie buffs here, let's talk V. I think V's vendetta hangs on Valerie's story. These scenes are the real turning point of the movie, or at the very least, what leads to it. If it's been a while, Valerie is the actress who was next door to V when V was imprisoned at Larkhill who wrote her life story down on the toilet paper in her cell and passed it over to V. Most of Valerie's story is told in flashback while Evey (Natalie Portman's character) is being fake-imprisoned by V. V has a picture of Valerie and her roses in a kind of shrine at his place that he shows Evey to prove to her that Valerie's story was real.

The full quote comes at the end of Valerie's flashback and goes like this:

It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must NEVER let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the worlds turns, and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you. Valerie. 

So to me, "But for three years I had roses" is acceptance of circumstances outside of one's control wrapped up in an unassailable belief in the goodness in our lives, no matter how small that goodness might seem when the world takes from us. Goodness is the part of the human spirit that endures. These words, the words in my tattoo, they're the words of someone who lost so much and remained capable of love- directionless, unearned love. V might not win the day through patient, nonviolent methods like we'd ostensibly want our heroes to, but the story of a person who could cling to that inch, to the hope for goodness for others and the remembrance of the goodness given to them, that story confirmed a revolution, a fight for freedom, and a trust in people, even the small scared people who let evil grow in the first place. In V's messy fictional world, the thing that brought about change for the better was one person's belief in the existence of goodness.

When I was in high school and college, I used to write grace on my left wrist, right below a freckle I have there, because I liked the idea of needing a reminder of God throughout the day and grace felt like the right reminder. I'm going to say it again: I liked the idea of needing a reminder. I liked the idea of the attention it'd get me, how deep I'd seem, how inspiring it would be that out of all the things I could have picked to put on my body, I picked grace, a concept with, just, so much theological and personal depth. I liked the idea of being that person, the kind of person who needed a reminder, someone with depth and experiences.

Look, I believe that we can see the goodness of creation everywhere, that even though humans fell, the goodness we were given when we were made still finds its way through. We shine and there's only so much life can do to dampen that. We get these ideas in our heads, these thoughts telling us all sorts of things: that we're not worthy, that other people aren't worthy, that our glow is worth more than theirs, that it's worth less, that it's not worth saving. I personally have this idea that if my glow isn't muted enough, I won't be taken seriously and I know that's wrong, but listen, despite everything else that I may think, I believe in love. I believe in goodness. I believe that there's goodness in the world and in my life.

I just need a reminder of that sometimes.

Sometimes daily.

And I've been thinking about this for a while now, about what mantra I needed to have emblazoned onto my skin to remind me of who I want to be and what I want to believe is true. And I've thought about grace, but that no longer has the same appeal. Grace should be evidenced in my actions and my heart, not on my skin. But when I saw this part of V for Vendetta this year, it clicked. It was faith and love and grace and goodness active in a messy world and I knew that this was what I had been looking for. I repeated it to myself through the rest of the movie. It rang in my head for days. It's as true as anything I've ever heard in a sanctuary. Not to say that those sanctuary words aren't true or are less true or anything like that. It's not a negative comparison. It's just that I don't think that God limits God's goodness to church people. It wouldn't get very far if God did.

So yeah, I think that covers it. I got this tattoo so I could remind myself of goodness, human and otherwise.

Maybe I should just start saying that.

Music Videos Part Three

Geeze, life must be busy or something. I must have papers due or maybe I'm just deep into existential crises. Probably, I'll update this section with some kind of information about that. If you're reading this, it means that I just clicked publish without proofing anything so there are probably grammatical errors as well. So fun! Anyway, here are a few more music videos that I think will make your day better.

1. All the Pretty Girls by Fun.

I'm never going to be against some Fun. And I oddly like the balloon thing.

2. Billye Jean by Yoshi Tsujimono

I can't advocate for the adaptation of popular songs enough. And this is fantastic.

3. You Make My Dreams by Hall & Oates

It's the 80's. It's absurd. It's fantastic. Come for the ear worm, stay for the horrid, horrid dancing.

4. Running Through Rivers by Carrie Hope Fletcher

YouTube creator content at its best.

5. Riptide by Vance Joy

I can't do surrealist films for long, but I find that this is a perfect three and a half minutes of odd images strung together in a weirdly coherent way.

The Hardest Thing in the World

Today, I got up and I did some reading on Special Relativity and how it changed our perception of time. I did this because I'm taking a class on the philosophy of time, because I think how we count our hours and think about our days makes a difference in how we live. I also did this because it interests me and it's fun and this is the first time in five years that I haven't been bored and I will chase that high until my brain gives out. I did this because I could.

But today, someone else didn't get up. Someone else didn't read, didn't change their mind, didn't think about their place in the world, didn't do something because they could, because they wanted to. Someone else was deprived of their today because a stranger with a gun took it from them. Someone else, who had a family and friends that loved them too, who filled a gap in a community, who made a difference in a whole set of lives just by breathing, that person will never get to do anything again.

I haven't followed the news from San Bernardino because I don't need to. They'll identify the shooters, or they won't, and the families will mourn and the community will try to carry on and the people with the ability to make a change in the status quo will say words but won't do anything. This is our routine, like falling asleep on the couch watching football after eating a huge meal with the people we love. I'm not saying anything you haven't heard before. We know how this story ends.

But what if we didn't?

Listen, I don't know the policy answer to this that both allows responsible gun owners to keep doing what they're doing and prevents people who want to do harm from having guns. I don't know the exact balance point between hurting and helping when it comes to the media. I don't know exactly how money plays into all of this. I don't know how to make people feel safe while keeping them safe while allowing them to be as free as they want to be. I don't know how to redefine our rights or if we should or if there's another way out of this.

What I do know is that we have to take care of each other.

If you pray, when we pray for these families and communities, we should be praying for the strength to care for those who have been harmed by this and who will never feel safe again. We should be praying for ears to hear their cries and hands and feet to move swiftly to answer. We should be praying for the helpers, for the people in these communities who will work tirelessly to heal these wounds.

Then we should pray for ourselves.

We should pray for the strength to do the hardest thing in the world: to live in it. We should pray for eyes to see the people who have been shunted to the edges of society, the ones who keep pain in their hearts, the ones who are driven to inflict that pain again on others they think have harmed them. We should pray for hearts that hurt for the people who feel like they have no community, no support, no one who understands them, no one who listens. We should pray for the courage every day of our lives to reach out to the people who want to hurt others and to love them as Christ loved us.

A gun is a piece of machinery, a tool.

Our job is to cultivate a world in which no one feels like they need to use it as a weapon.

That's not easy. But I'm praying for it, and for the strength to do something about it.

Would you pray with me, please?

Thoughts from Oxford and London- The Video

Pamela came to visit me for a week and it was fantastic and we made a video of fun facts and the time I took to make this video was the time that I would have usually taken to write a blog post, so this is what you get today, friends! Enjoy the cross-posting!

A Letter to My Body

(Editor's note: I just discovered the word asservations and really want to use it in daily conversation but recognize that I can't, so I just wanted to drop it in here and improve everyone's vocabularies. Heh heh asservations heh heh.)

Hey Body,

Let's have a quick heart-to-heart. Get it? Because, like, you've got a physical organ labelled the heart and I've got a metaphorical heart and both of them are apparently important to life, except yours is probably more so. Right?

Yeah, I'm going to take your silence as the reason we don't chat more often.

But listen, what I wanted to talk to you about is how we've been getting along lately. I know, I know, I promised you that we'd eat better and exercise more (though you have to admit, you've gotten more workouts since September than you've had in years, right?), but I have to tell you, Body, you're doing well. You've adjusted to the new time zone and the different food and the complete and utter lack of light after 3:30pm. You even put up with me spending hours in the same chair when I'm doing work. You've been really patient, and I appreciate that.

I wanted to tell you that because I know I've been down on you lately. It's not your job to get us noticed and I was expecting that from you and I shouldn't have. Not that you can't, of course! You've been doing a phenomenal job with the hair lately, I think the eyes and the eyebrows have been on point, the nose is solid as always, and, let's be honest, the whole sweater-jeans-boots look suits you. It's just that I felt your heart sink when I compared you to the people around you and reminded you that your friends are prettier than you and of course that's why no one looks at you the way they look at them, you useless sack of dead weight. I was wrong. It was a moment of weakness. Forgive me. Especially for the dead weight thing. Both the dead and the weight parts.

What I'm saying is that if you ever need affirmation, I'm here for you. You're beautiful and wonderful just the way you are. I think it's just that we don't look up, you know? I think that's all it is. We just don't see it. Also, you have immense value and worth outside of the male gaze and I'm very happy that you carry me around from place to place and also allow me to eat stuff and drink whisky. You're lovely and I'd like for you to stick around as long as you'd like.

Love,
Me

PS- Sorry for never putting Neosporin on our cuts.
PPS- And for injecting ink into your skin without asking you. But you've healed up real well!
PPPS- Also for that time I opened up that tupperware and thought, "Eh, this is probably still good" but it wasn't. You and you alone paid the price for that, my friend, and I'll never forget your valor.

The Post-Thanksgiving Post

I sometimes think that I'm thankful for only the things I think I deserve, that thankfulness is something I pay lip service to rather than something I genuinely feel. I use gratitude as justification, something along the lines of, "Listen, I know that I have a beautiful and wonderful life- I just don't have that thing that I really want yet," like saying that I understand how good I have it makes it okay that I'm still not satisfied. Justification and Thanksgiving- the two times that I feel obligated to express thankfulness.

So, in light of that cynical yet accurate representation of who I am as a person, here's a list of things I know I should be thankful for and cause me to shrug and say, "I can't complain," when asked about my life:

(1) I have lived in beautiful places. I won't make you jealous with glamour shots of Chapel Hill and Edinburgh, but, like, my life is lovely on a daily basis. And for three years, my job was to drive around the prettiest state on God's green earth. And also, we live in a universe that has stuff like this:

The Pinwheel Galaxy, featured on APOD

(2) I went to undergraduate for free. The Carolina Covenant is a gem.

(3) I can read and write and I spend my days in a place where I can spend every day reading and writing and that is valued. I can't imagine leading a life where that isn't true, that's how fundamental it is to me.

(4) I have wonderful friends who fly across oceans to see me and make videos for me and skype with me and send me random pictures of funny things while affirming my existence and a wonderful family who care about me even though I'm not there. I also have wonderful friends who are here who listen to me and care about me and give me good people to spend time with.

(5) Netflix. And online music. Honestly, the fact that I live in a world where I can experience the joy and wonder of other people's imagination and talent through my computer screen and have my life improved by that should be enough for me to be on my knees thanking the powers that be. I mean, did you see Alabama Shakes on The Late Show?

Brittany Howard is a gift from above. 

Ugh. Why are there so many nice things in the world? Why?