Identity, Fame, Mortality

The majority of my first ten days on the Scottish coast are spent in front of my computer. Here, I have a window view of a wild fuchsia with its flowers like red tutued ballerinas, a window box of little orange and yellow flowers, three stalks of orange irises, and some Scottish bluebells. Above all that is a tiny block of shingled roofs and a rectangular expanse of windowed sky.

It’s a far cry from my typewriter cows and the golden hillsides of the Borders, and I forget to tell myself with amazement every day, “You’re in Scotland,” because I don’t recognize the garden sparrows’ accents as being different from my own. Because I hardly look up from the screen to glance out at the bright, white, blinding sky.

I don’t remember to remind myself of the joy of being in Scotland until I leave my computer for minutes, for hours and go outside, until I turn the corner away from the house and look out and see the sea. Then I breathe and say, “Ah, I’m in Scotland. I’m on the coast.”

I spend the majority of my first week and a half on the coast feverishly finishing up the first draft of the novel I’ve been working on every day so far this year.

And, I finish it. I write a last sentence. I type The End.

Goodness.

I lean back away from the desk, away from the keyboard, and think, “I don’t think my mom’s going to like it. I don’t think my grandmother’s going to like it.” But in this moment, I do. In this moment of pride, of completion, at the end of 23 weeks of daily work (before the doubt, before the inner critic, before the sharp penned editor returns) I like it. It’s a story.

Well, anyway, it’s a story.

As many of my own stories do, this one surprises me.

Not quite sure how to feel, I put on my shoes and head out of the house to get some fresh air and to go celebrate (in a rather stunned delirium). I walk down the small path between all the houses and turn the corner. Ah, I’m in Scotland.

I walk down the hill to the harbor and sit outside at a waterfront restaurant. I order dinner and a glass of wine. I watch the gulls fly, I listen to them cry out. I’m on the coast.

I gaze out still slightly word-dazed at the late afternoon light and at the boats in the harbor. So, that’s it then? That’s the story? That’s where you end it? I think these things to myself, already questioning, already critiquing. (What kind of story was that?) Already I want to box it up and label it. I want to say, it’s a story about this one thing. This one easy to explain thing. But, really, I don’t know what kind of story it is. (My stories never seem all that easy to explain.) I don’t know yet how to sum it up. For now, I think, it’s a story about identity, fame, mortality. Maybe. Anyway, it’s a story. A story about a moment in a person’s life. It’s more about mortality than anything else. But is it? I don’t know, I don’t know what it’s about. I just wrote it.

I breathe. I try to stop the wild rambling. I can think about something else for now. But I’m still running every word through my mind, every symbol, every fictional encounter, every piano. Apparently, pianos are becoming a reoccurring theme in my books. As is running.

I eat my dinner and savor my wine. I watch the passing people, some with dogs some without dogs, the hovering gulls, and the vehicular traffic that motors by. The waitstaff returns and asks me if I 

want dessert.

I kind of do.

I order a fancy coffee and some chips (aka fries), “It’s a weird dessert, I know,” I tell the waiter. Kindly, she doesn’t judge me for it.

As I’m putting ketchup over my order of chips, I look up and smile at a passing couple. They smile back and then the man stops and says, “Isn’t that fattening?”

“I’m sorry?” I ask, not hearing correctly.

“Isn’t that fattening?” he repeats. Oh, I did hear correctly.

“Probably so,” I say. “I’ll walk it off later.”

“Where are you from then?” he asks. Come sit down, I think, come distract me from this story I wrote that I don’t yet understand. I wouldn’t mind if he and his wife joined me. I’d like the company.

I tell him I’m from Texas.

“You’ve got the oil money then,” he says.

“Not me,” I say.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Texas,” he says. Or maybe he says to America.

“It’s not too late,” I say.

His smile still happy, his face still bright, patting his wife’s hand which rests softly on his arm, he says cheerfully, “My wife has cancer and I have a disease called COPD. My next trip will be to the cemetery.”

He tells me this, stepping in a bit closer, and goes on to say that they are actually on holiday now and only live an hour and a half away. He tells me that their daughter has traveled to America, to Washington D.C. and to Ohio. His wife repeats Ohio as if it’s a word in another language—which I guess it really is coming as it does from the Seneca language (I have to look this up). Their pride for their daughter seeps off them like fog off the sea, like mist.

“Enjoy your chips,” the wife says, politely urging her husband away.

Don’t go, I think. Come tell me all about your daughter. Tell me about your holiday days. Tell me about all of your life. Tell me about the cemetery you plan to visit for your last holiday adventure. Tell me your feelings on mortality. “You’re welcome to sit and join me, if you’d like,” I say.

They cannot stay. They have to go on. They do go on.

As I’m finishing up my fancy coffee, I see them again on the other side of the street, the husband leaning in to talk to a trio of ladies sitting on a bench. He’s a talker. One who would talk the legs off a donkey. Talk to a stone. Talk to anyone who would listen. That’s why his wife pulls him politely on (“Enjoy your chips.” “Enjoy your afternoon.” “Enjoy your view of the sea.”), they’d never get anywhere if she didn’t.

They move past the ladies and then the husband sees me. He waves and I wave enthusiastically back. He points at my empty plate and puts a hand to his stomach, a question “Were they good?” I give the thumbs up sign and he with a broad smile returns it.

Carrying further on—there are other people to encounter, other stories to hear, other interchanges to have—they leave me again.

And I sit and watch and celebrate alone, but not lonely. Alone, but not averse to company.

Eventually, I settle my bill and leave. But I’m not quite ready to go back to the house and to the flowery view from the window. I need to walk off my chips.

With that end in mind, I head along the Coastal Path toward Cellardyke. It’s the next village over. It has its own harbor. It’s only ¾ of a mile away. I reach it in no time at all.

Yes indeed, there’s the harbor. Yes indeed, there’s the sea.

Through the little village, the Coastal Path goes on and on as far as St. Andrews and then who knows where else from there. There’s a grassy hill just beyond me. I’ll go see that grassy hill and then I’ll head on back.

Making my way at an easy pace, I come alongside the hill and consider climbing upward to see the sea from that perspective. I haven’t quite decided if I’ll do it or not when I happen to look up. There atop the hill, I see a flag. I blink. No, I am not seeing things. There’s an American flag flying on top of that hill. And here I thought I was in Scotland. Here I’ve been saying, “Ah, I’m in Scotland” all this time to myself (and also forgetting to say it to myself all this time).  

“I was not expecting to see that,” I say, maybe out loud.

Intrigued, I climb up the steps to the top of the hill. There’s a monument thing that I can see as well poking upward to the sky so maybe the Americans did something noble, maybe it was something to do with the Great War. When I reach the top, I come up alongside a man out walking his two dogs and as I take the last step I say, “I wasn’t expecting to see that,” and make a motion toward the flag.

“Oh yes,” the man says. “He flies all sorts of flags.”

 

“He’s not American?”

“Oh no, but it always seems he flies the flags of the people who come through. He had the Trinidad and Tobago flag flying a while ago and a group of people came from there. He’s had this one up a month and only a few days ago there was a couple from New Jersey. He flies the flags of places he’s visited.”

“Well, that’s interesting.”

We talk for a while longer of where we’ve come from, places we’ve seen, and flags.

“I think it might thunder and lightning,” he says, at some point. “You get to know the feel of the air. When you feel that little touch of cold air it sometimes means thunder and lightning.”

There is a cold touch to the air. I look out to sea and imagine thunder and lightning. That’d be something to see.

Somehow segueing from there, he tells me of a group of Americans who went around near the end of the Great War stealing back from the Germans the caches of treasures they’d stolen from occupied countries. He tells me how the Americans returned all the paintings, statues, jewelry, treasures, and bells (“The Germans stole all the bells!”) to their countries of origin without expecting anything in return. Something noble had happened after all. “It wasn’t just for fun. Some of the men lost their lives. They made it into a film. It’s quite good.”

Identity, fame, mortality, I think. Are all stories about that? Well, maybe. But maybe in the end all stories boil down to love; the search for love, the finding of love, the lack of love, the loss of love, the memory of love, maybe even the rediscovery of love.

We bid each other a fond farewell and I go back down the hill and back to my own little place with its flowers and my writing desk, back to my completed story in all its mess and unexplainability, back to my thoughts and the little seeds of thoughts that might later turn into another unexplainable story.