Sonnet for Swimmers

(The Cave of Swimmers, Gilf Kebir plateau, Egypt)

I’ve decided to take up a sonnet-writing challenge. Haven’t written one in ages, and I actually don’t remember ever having written a worthwhile one.

I’ve been mulling over this dream that has surfaced quite often ever since I could vividly remember my dreams: My house has become a pool, flooded with water, and I’m navigating the rooms as a swimmer, I’m breathing like a fish and I don’t know how. I realize at some point that the water has disappeared, or I’m not certain if there was water to begin with. In other similar dreams, I see fish floating about in the house as if it were a huge tank or as if I were snorkeling, except there is no water.

Sonnet for Swimmers

The house submerged, a ship whose days are lost
in sunken light and marooned nights, no sound
explains its muffled source or breaks the frost
steeped in doors and windows. In distance drowned,

the floors and walls succumb to water, wait
like darkened wings of an aquarium.
It’s hard to tell how I once was, the weight
of depth growing new lungs and mouth. Phantom

fish come through the ceiling, muted song birds.
They glide from room to room searching for air
and think, like me, they come from somewhere words
belong. Asleep I always glimpse them there;

Awake, I don’t know if I swim or fly,
if fish had ever dreamt their houses dry.

Home for the Holidays, and to Ring in 2012

All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old come true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born.

– Helen Hunt Jackson, “New Year’s Morning”

This is the first time in the last 3 years that I’ve come home to Philly for the Christmas holidays. Strange to see my parents in winter clothing, but great to snuggle up in my warm bed with the heavy blankets just as I remember them from when I was young. Everything was as I left it at the end of summer – my room, my books, the invasion of cats.

I bought my dad a cardboard airplane construction set for kicks and he set right to work, exactly the way I imagined he would — peering over his glasses with a disgruntled look of complete concentration, the same way he reads the newspaper, pores over maps, the way he used to help build my science projects:

The finished product. Look at that happy face; I should get him a whole set of cardboard cut-out vehicles.

Being home is also the time of cat abuse. Preferably, George.

Seeing people I hadn’t seen in a looong time. Mook 🙂

Some food I hadn’t seen in a long time:

A visit to one of my favorite neighborhoods, Olde City:

And my favorite bookstore:

A family trip to New York City to check out the 9/11 memorial:

The subtext to this photo: “Yeaaaaaaaaayy!”

A rollerblader in Battery Park.

Inside the memorial, which consists of two huge steel pools where the blueprint of the two WTC buildings used to be. Water falls continuously from all four sides of the pool in thin sheets onto a shallow pool floor, only to fall into an abyss-like hole in the very middle of the structure, whose depths are impossible to gauge. Inscribed in steel all along the sides of each pool are the names of those who died that day.

We walked on over to Chinatown for some dimsum, and then went to check out the High Line on the west side:

We rang in the New Year the traditional way: at a house party taking shots and singing karaoke:

This video is pretty typical of drunken encounters, but there’s something great about it since Tori Amos’s “Pretty Good Year” was coincidentally playing in the background: photo.php?v=10150450887136814

I think I’ve had some good closure to 2011. Some much-needed conversations, some stirring up and settling down, seeing faces that have always been familiar and close to me while growing up. I haven’t made too many resolutions, but I guess I should. I’ve promised to be better at keeping in touch and at writing letters – things that when we were younger, unattached, and unburdened by adult life, seemed so easy to accomplish. New year, new decisions. Or at least feeling again that my life is imbued with choice.

Some things, like hardy bargling with my tumor twin, will never change:

(Subtext to this photo: “Men, men, men, menmen, menmen, men, men…”)

Tomorrow I fly back to Madrid! Hopefully I’ll get over this miserable cold…

The Land of Kilts and Castles

Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
Where the huge castle holds it state, 
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town!

– Sir Walter Scott

 

John and I are ready to embark on yet another cold winter holiday…

Scarf, check. Gloves, check. Hat, big ski jacket, tights, boots.

This time, it’s to visit his motherland, Scotland, and to do all the things we’d been talking about for the last 3 and a half years: explore castles, eat haggis, neeps, and tatties, get a glimpse of William Wallace’s sword, and confirm the existence of square-sliced sausages. Alas, the last one I still haven’t gotten to, so the question still remains: “Are they REALLY square?”

Our trip starts out with a bit of bad luck. As our plane from Madrid is on its way to landing, we are informed that both of the Scottish airports are closed due to a crazy windstorm, and that we will be landing in Newcastle, England. Landing is followed by lots of waiting, a 5-hour bus ride, an overturned truck on the main road, a directionless bus-driver, complaining Spaniards, and bad sandwiches when we finally arrive at the hotel at 2 in the morning. (“How can you fuck up a sandwich?”)  But thankfully, the rest of the trip turns out quite smoothly.

Edinburgh is one of the most charming cities I’ve ever visited. It’s got cobble-stoned streets, these old red telephone boxes like in London, very cozy pie shops and clothing stores, a dark, violent history, and of course its very own castle. As we walk down Princes Street, the holiday season here hits us full force: carolers on the corner, German-styled winter markets, a big red Christmas bus-turned-restaurant blaring Christmas music.

We make our way up the Royal Mile, visiting shop after shop of souvenirs to see if we can find me my very own Lee clan tartan scarf  — no luck, it seems the Lee’s just don’t exist anymore.  The Royal Mile stretches from the Edinburgh Castle down to Holyrood Abbey and contains pubs, eateries, historical attractions, churches, and many tourist shops.

The Royal Mile is also full of these little passageways, called closes, which lead to back courtyards and connect to different houses. They’re the principle setting of Edinburgh’s violent history during the time of the plague and the site of many ghost and murder tours. We decide to tag along on a night tour, which leads us through a network of dank underground vaults that used to house hundreds of poor immigrants, into a cemetery that is home to several plague pits, and to a mausoleum where many visitors were allegedly attacked by supernatural forces…and by supernatural they mean a man in a black cape and Darth Vader mask who suddenly jumps out into the doorway.

One of the best things about living in Europe is being able to visit castles. I love them! Especially the ones with drawbridges and winding towers and old battlements, which is pretty much all of them.

Edinburgh Castle sits atop the volcanic Castle Rock and was mainly a military fortress from the 15th through 17th centuries, involved in many historical conflicts including the Wars of Scottish Independence. We visit the Great Hall, the barracks, which used to house prisoners of war, the war exhibitions, the battlements, which offer a great view of the city below, and the different towers where the princes resided.

We drive out of Edinburgh for a day to visit Wallace’s Monument. Remember Braveheart? William Wallace was the guy Mel Gibson played, a knight and leader revered all over Scotland for his bravery in fighting against the English during the Wars of Independence. Wallace apparently had to reach about 6’6 in order to be able to wield a 66-inch sword, so you can imagine how upset the Scots were at the casting of Mel Gibson as their national hero.

On the grassy knoll at the site of the monument, a man dressed up as a peasant soldier vividly recounts to us the battle and victory at Stirling Bridge, right below us.

We climb the 246 stone steps of the tower and reach the very top. The icy wind is blowing steadily as we see the Stirling countryside sprawled out below, probably not all too different from how it looked seven centuries ago.

And on to more castles! Stirling Castle is one of the most important castles in all of Scotland, the site where many Scottish Kings and Queens were crowned, including Mary Queen of Scots. The exhibitions here are fascinating; there are replicas of how the Great Kitchen looked then, how the nobility dressed, what the different statues and carvings represented.

I love unicorn tapestries. The Queen’s outer waiting room.

A bit of shopping on Victoria Street, and then down to the Grassmarket, the site of horse and cattle markets as well as public executions.

Aside from the quaintness and festiveness of all the shops and bars, another thing I really enjoyed was the friendliness and politeness of the Scottish. In Madrid, I’m used to strangers scowling at me, shoving me out of the metro, not saying please or thank you, so, pretty much the opposite of warm, friendly, and welcoming. It was such a nice break in Edinburgh; I was finally able to exercise my cheesing muscles to the extent of overdoing it, as well as my English-speaking politeness while basking in the warmth of hospitality. I had such a good time I’m considering coming back when the weather is kinder.

P.S. Haggis is quite good, just not every day.