three views of an evening

 

sunset, woodlands road

 

 

 

the River Kelvin

 

 

 

Facing south on the bridge over the Kelvin

three views of a morning

Kelvingrove park, towards the spire of Glasgow University

 

 

City of Ghosts

 

 

 

Lowland fields from the Edinburgh bound train

2014 Roundup

2014, in some pictures:

 

 

 

January – the train ride between Edinburgh and Glasgow

 

 

 

February – in Amsterdam for D’s birthday

 

 

March – I read Kirsty Logan’s The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales, one of my 2014 books of the year

 

 

Standing stones on Machrie Moor, erected c. 3,500-1,500 B.C.E

 

April on Arran – ancient standing stones and a strangely dry looking landscape (don’t let it fool you)

 

 

photo credit: D

 

May – D, A and I went to Moscow

 

 

 

 

June – two images since I couldn’t chose just one. A fantastic birthday trip to Iona and the finished first draft of Monstirs, which would go on to be accepted by Queen’s Ferry Press and renamed On the Edges of Vision – due out in August of the new year!

 

 

 

July – a trip to Butterfly World/ metaphor of the busy bee

 

 

August – York from on high (up on York Minster)

 

 

September – what else but the Scottish Independence Referendum. The country wasn’t ready yet (and the media was determined it would stay unready). The world turns, and I feel like it will happen in my lifetime.

 

 

October – a ghostly park in Glasgow

 

 

November – in the Winter Gardens at Glasgow’s People’s Palace

 

 

December – lingering seed heads on a vine, in front of a Christmas tree in a window.

 

 

This year:

 

 

I’ve read 35 books (which is good for me)

 

Travelled abroad to The Netherlands and Italy

 

Visited islands and breathed good sea air, damp fog, cut grass –

 

Wrote – a collection of flash fiction and longer pieces, pieces from which you can find links to HERE and at some point in August or July if you pre-order and if you have the notion you will be able to BUY the COLLECTION because it will be a real object in the real world all holding its many fragments close to itself oh my heart. (And though I linked to it before, here is my essay on the writing of On the Edges of Vision)

 

Wrote – a novella in flash fiction which was an honourable mention for the CCM Mainline contest/readathon/act of readerly epicness

 

Wrote – a chapbook of flash which is floating out there being read

 

– and began writing a linked flash fiction collection/narrative thing which I have neglected recently in the festivities

 

Read so many stories for Necessary Fiction as the new Fiction Editor there. Here are all the stories I’ve selected so far –

 

• Ghost Prostitute for War Vets by Carroll Sun Yang
• The Garden Sky by Dave Petraglia
• Teacher of the Year by Dan Townsend
• Say by Thomas Cardamone
• Cossacks and Robbers by Maia Nikitina
• The Centaur’s Wife by Amanda Leduc
• Burn This by Rob Roensch

 

I am trying to keep things at gender parity, without imposing quotas or any such thing. It can be done – it truly believe the ‘but quotas harm art!!’ is a strawman argument. In that light, I will keep calling for submissions for people outside the straight-white-male venn simply so that I can reject just as many stories by diverse writers as by the would be Earnest Hemingways (who I read too, every one). I won’t be able to tell much by a name or the content of a story but I want all writers to feel that they will be read judiciously, where the balance in publishing (in literary journals, reviews, and so on) is weighted currently askew.

 

The new year will bring more trials and travels (America for one, for a much anticipated wedding AND hopefully readings from me. More details when I have them), more reading and editing and listening and I’m sure joy and grief and dreamy landscapes to photograph and that first collection of mine (have I mentioned it enough yet? It keeps escaping from my fingers) and moves and jobs and writing and writing –

 

Wishing all of you the best of Hogmanay, whether you spend it out in the cold, cheering fireworks, or inside warm and happy.

 

 

Here’s to 2015!

Ghosts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A submerged, dark feeling to Glasgow early this morning.

Summer, Night, Leavings

D and I are leaving Edinburgh, for Glasgow.

That means new neighbourhoods to explore. But for now – the old city, on a soft summer night:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(flowers with and without the low-light setting)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Train tracks leading outwards. Tomorrow is flathunting. For now, there’s sleep.

As in a dream

 

Iona Abbey, once one of the most important centres of religion and learning in Western Europe, now a place for tourists and lodgings for ecumenical visitors, is a plain, almost austere place. The air of ruin hangs, just pushed back to arms distance. Systematically dismantled during the 16th century Scottish Reformation, it stood open to the elements for a time, before being basically rebuilt and restored – a process only completed in the last decade of the last century.

 

 

 

Final resting place of George MacLeod and his wife Lorna, responsible for leading the charge to bring about saving the abbey from ruin.

 

 

 

 

 

Restored stone carvings, of a slightly eerie nature.

 

 

 

 

While open to the elements, the Abbey’s church became home to these apparently rare sea-loving ferns. According to the guide, their presence is evidence that the building, though now enclosed, is still breathing – I quite like that idea.

 

Outside the church we came across a strange sight: a swarm of bees, baffling a local expert beekeeper called in to guide them away.

 

 

 

There’s only one clearly visible but if you look close to the guttering, you can see the swarm. The beekeeper was scratching his head over how to charm them down into the box he had ready. Later we’d see him cross the fields with a wheelbarrow and a companion. I wonder if he managed to move them on? The bees caused no bother to us, even as they blew around us, rising up to the roof. That has to be some sort of omen, doesn’t it? A good one. At least in this one spot, the troubled bee population of the world is thriving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the 11th century St Oran’s Chapel. St Oran, or Odran, was one of St Columba’s followers, and as such lived in the late 500s. However his chapel stands in the beautiful pocket graveyard of Reilig Ordhrain (Oran’s graveyard, naturally enough). I found the chapel had a very peaceful atmosphere. It’s ecumenical now and dedicated to prayers for justice for causes and people in need of such entreaties. However, Wiki supplies an amazing snippet of hagiography for St Oran, that I have to share:

 

Another legend tells that the chapel that Saint Columba wanted to build on Iona was destroyed every night. Finally he was told by a voice that it could never be finished until a living man was buried below. So Odran was buried alive willingly and the chapel could be finished. But one day he pushed his head through the wall and said that there was no hell as was supposed nor heaven that people talk about. Alarmed by this Columba let Odran’s body be variously covered with earth more securely or removed with haste.^[3]

In a Hebridean version of this tale Odran is promised that his soul will be safe in heaven. Some time after the burial Columba wants to see Odran once more and opens the pit under the chapel. When Odran sees the world he tries to come out again, but Columba has the pit covered with earth quickly to save Odran’s soul from the world and its sin.^[3]

These legends are one of the few instances of foundation sacrifice in Great Britain. [x]

 

All I can see now in my mind is St Oran pulling a post mortem John Lennon, and subsequently St Columba’s passive aggressive zombie re-interment. Anyway. The story is likely linked to a much older legend – the lines between pagan and early Christian tales can get a bit fuzzy. A good story is one worth re-telling, as many writers will tell you.

 

 

 

I’ll leave you with that strange story, and this last vista of the abbey, with the white-suited beekeeper walking back to his puzzling duties under the bright blue June sky.

Staffa

photo credit: D

 

 

A small island off the coast of Mull, Staffa was named by the Vikings – ‘Staffa’ meaning stave, or pillar.  It’s easy to see why – Staffa is a basalt outcrop, a bloom of lava that came in three stages – the second of which provided the island with the great black pillars that give it its name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had about an hour on the island, just about enough time to see everything. By everything, I mean a landscape similar to Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh – a volcanic plateau studded with low, alpine-like wildflowers and grasses, the only difference being the small coves, the abundance of seabirds, and the ever-present sea sparkling below.

 

 

 

 

But the biggest draw to Staffa has to be Fingal’s Cave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not a deep cave, nor the biggest in the world. But there is something very moving in the turquoise colour of the water, the sound in the air as you stand inside on the narrow black ledge, staring down at the bobbing white jellyfish coming and going with the low surge.

The cave has been a mystery and an inspiration for centuries. James MacPherson’s Ossian poems popularised the name Fingal’s Cave, after the legendary builder of the Giant’s Causeway, a similar stepped Basalt formation in Northern Ireland.  The cave also inspired Mendelssohn’s Hebridean Overture, which some kind soul has uploaded to Youtube with a video of the ferry crossing to the island. In the piece you can hear the surging of the waves – when he visited it was apparently a rougher day than when we did. It would be an amazing, if cramped, space to put on a small concert. I wonder if it’s ever been done?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’d happily go back to Staffa, and perhaps from there on to Lunga, one of the Treshnish islands where thousands of Puffins make their nests in season. Perhaps I will get the chance some time later. Though there are many more islands that pull me towards them.

 

That’s all for today. Tomorrow – Iona Abbey, bees, and the graveyard of the great and the good.

Iona in the blue

 

It was a sunny day when we arrived on Iona, which you must reach from Edinburgh by taking:

the train to Glasgow (50 minutes)

the train to Oban (3 1/2 hours)

the ferry to the island of Mull (40 minutes)

a bus across Mull on single-track roads, to the ferry at Fionnphort (1 hour)

the final ferry from Fionnphort – 10-15 minutes.

 

It takes, with transfer and waiting times, roughly a whole day. As the crow flies, the distance between Edinburgh and Iona is only 126 miles . Here’s our journey across Iona on the first day:

 

 

 

 

As you might know, Iona  was the first place Christianity came to Scotland, in the late 500s, through the exploits of St Columba, or Colm Cille in Irish. He seemed an interesting, magnetic figure – his name means ‘church dove’ but he also led an army against some Irish princes and the resulting slaughter by his group may have been the reason he fled Ireland forever. He supposedly settled with his 12 followers on Iona after climbing a hill to determine whether or not he could still see Ireland – when the answer was no, he was happy to set up his religious community there.  Under his tenure, the island flourished as a centre for learning as well as religious thought. My favourite exploit of his was the ‘proofreading miracle’ he performed – he correctly predicted that a monk writing a text would make only one mistake, and that it was changing an uppercase I to a lowercase i.  St Columba – saint of proofreaders? I’m not sure. There may be a few more contending for that, given that the monks so liked to write and copy great texts. It’s also believed now that the famous Book of Kells was at the very least begun on Iona, and taken to Kells to protect it from the frequent Viking invasions of the island.

 

 

 

 

This is the youth hostel where we stayed – lovely owner, and perhaps one of the best settings for a youth hostel anywhere in the world –

 

 

 

 

 

 

(these last photos were taken about 10pm)

 

That’s probably enough for today. As you can see, the island was very photogenic. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was a huge draw for the Colourists, a group of Scottish artists whose work revels in the chalky white and turquoise blue palette the island provides. Tomorrow I’ll post some pictures from Staffa, a tiny, mysterious island that influenced Mendelsohn in his Hebridean Overture. The sea fog came in, as I said, on the last day we were there, so I hope to add more images of the machair disappearing into the coolness.

Outside

– suddenly, light everywhere, and flowers. As I said yesterday, D and I are back from Arran, so here’s a flood of pictures from the train journey and our wanderings there:

 

 

 

Rapeseed field outside of Edinburgh

 

 

 

 

 

A group of stags out for a wander by the shore at Lochranza, Arran

 

 

 

 

 

Round the headland, close to Fairy Dell

 

 

 

 

Standing stones on Machrie Moor, erected c. 3,500-1,500 B.C.E

 

 

 

 

 

The ruins of Moss Farm, facing Machrie Moor

 

 

 

 

 

Hanging out down at the harbour in Blackwaterfoot

 

 

 

 

Towards Holy Island, a Buddhist retreat reachable by ferry from Lamlash

 

 

 

 

 

The road between the villages of Lochranza and Corrie

 

 

 

 

 

Homeward bound

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as we got a seat on the ferry, we pulled out the CalMac ferry company’s guide to sailings, and started planning our next trip. My birthday is in the middle of June, and the long nights call me north west. Iona, or Islay.  Until then, work resuming. Waiting on word for various submissions and carving out the next ms, balancing the scales. Walking the city. Glad at last the year feels like it has really begun. Happy Easter, to those who celebrate. happy Spring to everyone to which that applies.

Thievery!

It’s not as bad as it sounds!

 

Writer Kirsty Logan has featured a little piece by me on her website, for her series Thievery, in which writers describe how they came to write a particular short story. In mine, I talk about the real-life inspiration behind an excerpted story from Flesh of the Peach:

 

Back in 2011 I was living in New York City, walking dogs for a living and trying to write a novel with a name that kept wriggling away from me. I knew I wanted the book to be set partially in New Mexico – a place I’d heard a bit about from D, my husband, and his dad, who’d lived in Albuquerque a while. In my mind, Albuquerque was a place that Bugs Bunny always said he shoulda turned left at, and that was about it. About New Mexico, I knew there was a lot of desert and art. Sand in a variety of pleasant pastel colours and good light. I checked out some paintings, the state flag and the names of a few of the national parks on Google, but at heart I knew that any novel I wrote would be title-less and flimsy if I didn’t get myself out there for some real life research.

Read More…

 

Oh, and Happy St Valentines Day to those who care to celebrate such things. D surprised me this morning by making us breakfast (he was supposed to be at work, I thought) then whisking us off to North Berwick to climb the Law, a pyramid-shaped hill of volcanic rock that stands out from the surrounding flat fields like nothing else but its twin, the Bass Rock, which stands a little more like a cake tin out in the waters of the Firth of Forth. The Law was also being climbed the hard way by a trio of Shetland ponies.

 

(That’s a giant fibreglass whale jawbone, recently erected to replace the real whale jawbone that used to stand there before it.)

 

We had a fine meal in North Berwick’s Thai restaurant, then after a quick pint in the Auld Hoose, caught the train back to Edinburgh just as the skies opened and the sleet came blowing down.  The weekend stretches out for writing and reading and staying warm.