Backlog: Holiday edition

Will checking in. It's been quite a while since my last post. I was brewing one for the holidays back in the day, but it slipped through the cracks and was never published. Too bad. Let's turn back the clocks and I'll show you what the past three and a half months were like. Holidays first.

Note: this has nothing to do with April Fools Day. Maybe in an ironical I-never-update-except-on-the-day-that's-for-jokes-and-pranks way, but it wasn't intentional. Mostly just procrastination.

Christmas 2011

Although this was probably the quietest and most relaxing Christmas I've ever had, it was also pretty lonely. Anyone that knows me at all knows I prefer to stay away from large social gatherings as they make me feel incredibly uncomfortable. For me growing up, social gatherings and discomfort became synonymous with Christmas. Yes, I missed all of you individually, but escaping the giant family Christmas party two years in a row is something that I'm not exactly depressed about. That said, there were some depressing moments feeling far away from home, like when I explored the Christmas Market only to see families enjoying each other's company and couples holding hands. Yep, I missed you all and I felt a little homesick.

Many of my friends had gone home for the holidays, but a few were still in town. We tried our best to make our own fun on Christmas Day, resulting in the purchase of several batches of mulled wine. On Christmas Eve, I attended a service at St Gile's Cathedral on the Royal Mile, mostly as a symbolic Christmas-y gesture, also partly because Anthropology has made me see religion very differently. It was fascinating to see these rituals as an anthropologist, studying the carefully crafted version of Christian world history and seeing all of the material reminders religion uses to evoke experience. I also heard some cool Christmas carols.

After the St Gile's Cathedral Christmas Service

Princess Street Christmas Market

December rain

Rain on the Royal Mile

New Years Eve 2012

This holiday was a little more eventful than Christmas, as Edinburgh is world renown for their New Years Eve party. Hogmany is the name, it's a 3 day celebration beginning with a torchlight parade, including a massive midnight party, and ending with a jump into the ice cold Firth of Forth. I attended the amazing torchlight parade, led by 100 pipers and drummers and followed by possibly 2,000 marchers holding torches, all making their way throughout the city in an enormous march. It was very impressive; you could hear the pipers in any section of the city and see the torches lined up for a mile. Aaand of course, although I brought my camera, I forgot to load it with a memory card, so I failed to capture the most amazing imagery I've seen in this city since I arrived. Good job, Will. 

The next night, New Years Eve, almost made up for it with more amazing visuals -- an incredible firework show showering the city in light. The midnight party was great, jam packed full of travelers and Scots alike, surrounded by music venues playing every genre of music imaginable. At midnight, fireworks lit up the city from two different points, surrounding the crowd with explosions of color. It's something I'm not going to forget about anytime soon.

January Highland Trip

With three weeks of winter break still to go, I decided to mosey up north to get a better look at the Highlands and explore the north coast of Scotland. I first took a train to Inverness, enjoying the beautiful sights of Scotland's white wilderness and snowcapped mountains. The city of Inverness turned out to be a bit of a sleepy town without much to do other than see Loch Ness, which I decided not to do because of the hokey feel and expensive fees. Yes, I'm a poor excuse of a tourist. I explored the town and made myself comfortable in cafes and pubs, reading a used Hemingway novel I picked up at a very old bookstore in the downtown square. I also made friends an Australian traveler staying at my hostel by the name of Tim who had been traveling in Europe from hostel to hostel for the past six months -- from Istanbul to Rome to Marrakech to Amsterdam and then to Scotland. When we had both had enough with Inverness, he decided to follow me up north to the town of Thurso, the northernmost city on UK's mainland. I ended up being very glad for this. Who would have thought, a tiny town on the northernmost tip of Scotland would be absolutely dead in mid-January? It was a ghost town. There was only one other person staying in the hostel -- another young guy from Aberdeen, who is absolutely crazy. He was staying in Thurso to surf the north coast. By himself. In January. Insane. He was actually a pretty cool guy; we all hung out and had a few beers, went to their pub and shot some pool. Side note: this pub apparently is well known for breaking out in weekend fist-fights as the locals, who sometimes travel 100 miles from all across Caithness to hear live music and have a pint on Saturdays, fight over the local girls. I guess scarcity of a resource always results in violence.

Anyway, Tim and I took a bus along the coastline, admiring the rocky coast, beautiful rolling hills of grass, lonely stone cottages, and an eery lack of population. We hopped off at the town of John O'Groats, which isn't actually much of a town at all. It's on the eastern-most tip of the north coast, a long ways away from anything. Thurso must be a metropolis to the people living around this area.

Tim and I had heard about a hike to some interesting rock formations along the cliffs, so we wandered off along the coast without having much of a clue as to where exactly we were going or what to expect. We had been incredibly fortunate in that for the first time in weeks, Caithness saw sunlight. The sun, the sea, and the trail were an amazing and enjoyable site. We gained elevation and the cliffs grew taller and taller beneath our feet. Soon we came upon what we were searching for -- Duncansby Stacks -- and it was absolutely beautiful. I'll let the photos below speak for themselves. Soon after our discovery, our good fortune ran out. Black clouds materialized out of nowhere and bellowed hail and high winds. We attempted to wait out the storm, but it was not stopping; in the meantime, we both became soaking wet and felt the wind's cold bite. We decided to turn back, but instead of returning along the trail, we cut across fields, jumping fences and dodging barbed wire, determined to find shelter from the storm as quickly as possible. Upon returning to John O'Groats, we discovered a single business open -- a small gift shop cafe -- why a gift shop cafe was open in that town is beyond understanding, but I'm thankful for it nonetheless. We grabbed a hot drink, tried to dry off, and waited in the gift shop for a few hours until the next Thurso-bound bus arrived. Tim and I both agreed it was a hell of an adventure. We soon parted ways; he continued on his journey, making his way to Northern Ireland, and I headed back to the comfort and warmth of my flat in Edinburgh.

Intercity bus to John O'Groats

This is what the geography of Caithness looks like

I think this is the right way...

Those are some lucky sheep

Scotland's lil' lighthouse

Northern sunlight

Duncansby Stacks sighted

Ducansby Stacks

Getting closer

Storm's a-comin'

Hail

Still pretty

It's not letting up, is it...

Turning back

This is 50% of John O'Groats... I don't understand this town.

On the train back to Edinburgh

Today

Well that gets us through the middle of January. There's still an entire semester to write about, as I'm just weeks away from finishing up Semester 2. Very soon all of my essays will be complete, the proposal for my dissertation will be finalized, and I'll be heading off to Italy and London for a while, but I'll write more about that later. One step at a time. 

I'll leave you with my morning breakfast. It was so tasty.

That would be an egg-bacon-avocado-spinach-jalapeño breakfast sammich on a wholemeal bun with sriracha hot sauce. Easily in the top 5 most delicious things I've ever made.

Road Trip

Mimicking my most recent tweet, Scotland is absolutely beautiful. I don't think there is a superlative fantastic enough to describe how beautiful this country can be, and this is November -- a month on the cusp of winter where parts of the US normally would look desolate, dead or dying. I went with four friends into the southern Highlands this weekend and to two Eastern Scottish cities -- St. Andrews and Dundee. The country that I've seen here, even now, is green, vibrant, and alive. I have a strong urge to see as much as possible of this small nation while I'm here.

Eirik from Norway; Seva from Ukraine; and Nikolai and Paulina -- a married couple from Moscow, Russia were my company on this day trip. We rented a car -- a Vauxhall Insignia -- and drove north, first to Campbell Castle in a small town called Dollar, then to the seaside and home to St Andrews University, the English speaking world's third oldest university (after Cambridge and Oxford), then north to a typical Scottish city of Dundee which is about the population of Boise.

Although I took many photos of this trip, they're all film and they have not yet been developed. I did lend Eirik my camera and he took some photos, so I'll post some of them now, and mine later.

Castle Campbell
This castle was owned by the stinking rich Campbell family from 1500 until it was torched by Scots in mid 1600's for the Campbell clan's support of Oliver Cromwell in the War of the Three Kingdoms. This is set at the base of the Highlands (the "butt of the highlands" as someone so eloquently named it on the trip) and the hillsides are draped with heather and moss. We had a bit of a hike getting up to the castle's elevation but were rewarded with an amazing view of subsiding fog over the small town of Dollar. The castle itself was very impressive, especially with its spiral stone stairway and rooftop access.

St Andrews

A small town on the sea (reminding me a great deal of Whitby in East Yorkshire), St Andrews has charm, beauty, history, and community. We apparently rolled in during some sort of a traditional student weekend, where at 2pm the streets were crawling with Scottish undergrads, completely drunk and covered in face paint. They had to take pictures of themselves doing certain tasks around the town, such as laying on a stack of 5 people, retrieving love letters from baristas, stealing public signs, and finding treasure hunt items hidden in a graveyard. It was confusing for us at first, but became extremely amusing. Being near the sea, it sufficiently satiated my unrelenting desire to stand at a beach and smell fresh ocean air. The town also boasts the impressive St Andrews Cathedral, Scotland's largest church ruins. I really loved this city and may just investigate their available PhD programs.

Dundee

As many consider Edinburgh to be the "least Scottish city in Scotland" (probably due to the global multicultural essence of the city), we decided we wanted to see what a "real" Scottish city looked like, and I think we were all surprised. Dundee is not a large city, its population is only 150,000, but has a structure and architecture comparable to any historic European city. The city is centered around an enormous pedestrian district with pubs, cafes, and shops (Bon Marche still exists??) lined with public art, enormous churches, and beautifully preserved Victorian buildings. If the stones and spires typical of Scottish architecture were to be replaced with the Bavarian gingerbread styled paneling, it would not be difficult to convince someone they'd been transported to Old Town Frankfurt or Budapest. Dundee surprised me in the best of ways.

Home

After a long day (7am to 10pm), we returned home and ate a pizza. We also discovered that snooty pub owners get extremely angry if you try to eat take away at the bar. Jerks. So, we retreated to Eirik's flat, ate our food, and ended our evening.

 On a separate note, I had a funny feeling returning to Edinburgh yesterday after the trip. When I arrived in September, it seemed like it was under such stressful and chaotic conditions, traveling as cheap as humanly possible -- a trillion delayed layovers, an overnight nightmare bus, avoiding taxi fare by hauling 100 pounds of luggage on my back across the city, skipping meals and eating peanuts... I was incapable of enjoying my arrival. This time, I feel like I got to do it over. I entered Edinburgh with my sanity and composure, fully able to appreciate where I had left and what Edinburgh meant. That first day, Edinburgh meant the end to a torturous blur and a space to pass out, but this time it meant something much more. Edinburgh this time meant a sense of security, a comfortable routine, a familiarity of environment, and a group of close friends. It's strange to see a city be transformed right in front of your eyes, but I'm glad it did. Returning to Edinburgh yesterday remade this city into a home.

Film

I recently bought a used Pentax MV 35mm camera and have been capturing my days with color film. Here are some results from the first roll. Click any image to enlarge.

Remembering

"You know, they straightened out the Mississippi in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. 'Floods' is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory -- where the nerves and the skin remember how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our 'flooding'."

- Toni Morrison's Beloved

Just Warming Up

Greetings, hello, glad to see you're still with us. Let me catch you up on my studies:

My journey into the world of Anthropology is becoming increasingly intense and is mirrored by my own growing fascination with the subject. So far my favorite topics have mostly been revolving around embedded fieldwork focused on various cultural phenomena (rather than anthropological theory). One fascinating study charted the process by which Traveling Gypsies in Great Britain maintained their cultural identity while facing extreme pressure to assimilate into "Gorgio" (non-Gypsy) society; a large contribution to their solidarity is made by their beliefs and rituals regarding death. When a Gypsy dies, they are buried in a Gorgio grave as to prevent grave-robbing while their house and possessions are all burned. The dead's name is no longer spoken and they fear the spirit (called "Mulo," always malevolent and cantankerous) is going to haunt their former friends and relatives. When a Gypsy dies, they lose their ability to travel and become sedentary, similar to a living Gorgio. So, in a way, dying is similar to losing one's Gypsy-ness. What the Gypsies fear is not death or the dead, but losing their identity and being forced to integrate with mainstream society. These cultural practices help reinforce these fears to maintain group distinctions.

Another fascinating subject is the idea of 'everyday resistance' against political systems. This micro-paradigm proposes that we are constantly engaged in political action; every action has political ramifications that relate to the current structure of the state. For example, one researcher explains that women in Egypt actively gossip and complain about arranged marriages. They share old stories about women who were able to fight off dissatisfactory arrangements by sheer stubbornness to the point of cancelation by their father. These old wives tales give young women confidence and resilience when faced with an arranged marriage they dislike. The act of gossiping becomes a form of political resistance that chips away at the institution of gender relations by strengthening the power of women in the traditional arena of arranged marriages.

An article I just read last week caught my attention and reminded me of my undergraduate thesis about Tito and Yugoslavia. The subject was about secularism in Turkey and how Ataturk, the founder of the modern state who died in 1938, was being symbolized and utilized by secularists and religious groups alike in the modern day. Ataturk was able to bring together Muslim and non-Mulsim populations under one nation, much like Tito in the ethnicity-rich Western Balkans, and established a neutral state. Fascinatingly, secularists evoke Ataturk's image in a ritualized, almost religious manner. They ask "what would Ataturk say," they channel his spirit to request his guidance though his typical response according to Ataturkists is "let me rest!" Statues of Ataturk are constructed all over the city to pay tribute to him, and according to the article are particularly protected by law.

"In 1951, the Turkish National Parliament passed a law on 'Crimes Against Ataturk.' Law number 7872, still on the books in the 1990s, punishes all those who 'insult the memory of Ataturk' through words or actions to three years in prison. Those who damage busts or statues of Ataturk are similarly punished with confinement."

Which reminds me of this from Istanbul, March 2009:

Whoops!

I've been having fun with Anthropology so far. Final essays for my two courses are due in less than a month so the busiest part of the semester is just ahead of me. I will be completely sick of Foucault and resistance studies in exactly one month's time.

Until next time!