My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Twenty-nine

Tuesday, 3 January, 1989
Wien to Stuttgart to Karlsfelden*

WIEN-- Came down around 7:20 and asked the clerk at the desk if he could call me a cab. But it doesn’t work that way here. What you do, you leave your luggage in the lobby then walk up the street to the cabstand. You bring a cab back with you, or it brings you, rather, you pack in the luggage, and you’re off.

I checked the route to the West Bahnhof on the map last night and it seems to me that the cabbie took the scenic route today . . . He didn’t take a single major street until the very last. It wasn’t only the money I was worried about, it was the time.

But maybe he was trying to avoid rush-hour congestion. Made it with fifteen minutes to spare, which with a EurailPass is plenty. I suppose if I’d missed the 8:00 AM train I could’ve got the next one, that left at 10:00 or so, and stopped in Munich after all. But I’d pretty much decided not to do that and to go straight through to Stuttgart.

ON THE TRAIN-- It’s a long ride; but happily the sun was out and it was a nice day to gape out the window at the Austrian and German countryside.

Listened to my music on the headphones . . . while I was listening to my tape of Bach’s Wachet auf it came to me that it’s rather odd, that here I am, what you’d call a visual artist, but visual art doesn’t move me the way music does.

STUTTGART-- I probably shouldn’t’ve been, but I was surprised to see how Stuttgart is all bulwarked with great high hills, almost mountains, all terraced for vineyards.

It’s also surprising to find how bloody tired you can get, just sitting on your can for eight hours or so. Having disembarked, I lugged the bags downstairs from where the trains come into the Hauptbahnhof to a kind of subterranean shopping mall. Got to where the info place was supposed to be, and it turned out to be only a bulletin board. The place with informative people and maps and things was farther on down.

Oh.

Stood in line and got my Stadtplan. But the Wechsel, the money changing place, was back up at the track level.

Oh.

Hauled myself and my bags back up there, cashed in the rest of the Schillings and got some Marks in exchange for a traveller’s cheque. Made it known I wanted some loose change for the phone but the man said, No, you get that up on a mezzanine, at the post office branch.

Oh, God.

I picked up my luggage again, found the stairs, and arrived at the Bahnhof post office. Up there I stood and waited my turn in a nice long line. When I got to the guichet I encountered a clerk who, between his deficient English and my next-to-nonexistent German, only managed to communicate to me that you have to buy a card to use the payphones.

Oh, God damn!!

I just about lost it. I couldn’t help it, I started crying. Happily, the postal worker recognised the problem and sent me over to speak with a man with a bit more English.

He clarified that it was the long distance service phones, there in the room, that required the cards. The local call phones were out in the hall, and here was the change I required.

Finally!

I called the number Friedhelm* gave me for his home and got his mother.

"Friedl is not here," she said in her charming accented English. "He is in town, at the Bahnhof. He will be back around 10:00. You call back then."

That seemed a little late to me, so I said, "Well, please tell him that Blogwen X--* called and that I am here in Stuttgart. He knows me from Coverdale*."

"Oh, Coverdale!" Friedl’s mother exclaimed. "He’s at the Bahnhof to pick up some people from Coverdale! They are from Canada, I think."

"Oh, Chrissie* and Pete*!"

"Yes, Chrissie and Pete. They are coming from Köln at 5:30 or 6:30, I don’t remember. They will come back here. You call in the evening."

I tried to make her understand that I was at the Bahnhof, too, but decided at last that it wasn’t important. For now I had a clear idea of what I could do. Signed off with Frau Schneider*, trotted the bags down to the lockers, stashed them, and headed for the nearest Arrivals chart to check for trains from Köln.

Ah, yes, here was one at 5:35. It was about 5:20 by now, so I remarked the Gleis number and went back to the trains.

I’d recognise that aqua and navy blue anorak anywhere. His back was turned to me and I came up behind and said brightly, "Guten Tag, Herr Schneider*!"

This is one of the smarter things I’ve done in awhile. He turned around, said, "Hello, Blogwen!" and gave me a hug. It was like a little homecoming.

Said Friedl, "Do you have a hotel yet?"

"Well, I was going to ask you if you know of any nice cheap ones."

"You come to us."

There it was, simple as that.

And guess what, not only were Chrissie and Pete expected any minute, but Theo Smyth* [a Coverdale student from South Africa] and his fianceé Phoebe* would be flying in from London this evening! Talk about Providence!

Chrissie and Pete were duly debouched from the Köln train and greetings exchanged all round. I collected my bags from the locker-- Friedl insisted on carrying the blue one-- and we went back down through the shopping mall thing and through to a parking garage, where Friedl packed us all into his car and we headed off to Karlsfelden*, where he lives.

KARLSFELDEN-- It was dark by now, if a very starry night, so I couldn’t tell you what the route looks like. But he lives with his parents in a garden-type apartment, very nice with a living room, kitchen and dinette, three bedrooms, and a bath.

His mother didn’t seem at all disconcerted to find she had an additional guest. She speaks much more English than his father, who basically just smiled and nodded and went back to his paper.

Their Christmas tree, standing in the living room, had both candles and electric lights on it. Kind of a compromise.

The plan was that Chrissie and Pete would stay over at Anni Breitbart’s*, Friedl’s girlfriend, and Theo and Phoebe, and now I, would sleep over at Friedl’s. So now we got back in the car and drove over to Anni’s, to talk and have supper until 9:00 PM and time for Friedl to fetch the South African contingent.

Anni’s mother had laid out the German version of charcuterie and once again, it was much better than in France. Anni, at my request, was helping me conjugate the German version of "to be" and pretty soon her father came and joined the festivities.

After supper we all sat in the living room and had a rather odd, but very effective conversation. Both Anni and Friedl have pretty good English, and her mother also. But Herr Breitbart’s English is next to nil. I have a smattering of literary German and Pete knows Dutch as well as English. So the talk was a kind of round robin of translating, with somehow or other everyone eventually coming to know what was being said.

Found out that Germans are as conscious of regional differences as Americans are (maybe more so!), and to humorous effect. Stuttgart, et al. is in Swabia, and you should have heard Friedl and Anni go after the Bavarians (Bayreusche [sp?] [Bayrische]) and the Hessians! I got the feeling that Bavarians are considered the hicks of the German people, and at any rate they have execrable accents. The controversy between the Hessians and the Swabians seems more to be over which of these groups, alone, speaks proper German.

Herr Breitbart is interested in music and showed me some sheet music pieces he’s working on (I’m not sure for what instrument). I told him I’m a Berlioz lover and that I’d visited the town where Hector was born. Somehow I knew the word for that was "geboren" and was very pleased when I discovered I was right and had got my idea across.

We stayed for awhile after Friedl left for the airport, then Anni took all of us back to Friedl’s place. To our surprise he was already there with Theo and Phoebe, sitting at the kitchen table eating a pizza. Their plane came in early.

I was too excited to do more than pick at a piece. We all sat up talking till nearly midnight.

Phoebe, I learned, flew up to England from the RSA just a week or so ago. Theo spent Christmas Day at Dunstan Oak’s* [one of the college tutors], where he and his family had assembled the Coverdale "orphans." Theo said the weather had been nice and sunny in England the past couple weeks. Very unlike France.

Anni, to whom Friedl is not engaged (at least not yet) took Chrissie and Pete away with her and we all eventually turned in. I shared a room with Phoebe but we didn’t really talk because it was so late and so much was planned for the morning.

Living Exegesis

The other day, in my regular rota of Bible reading, the Old Testament passage happened to be Proverbs 3, which includes the verses

5Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.

A couple days later, the Psalm selection was No. 37, which in part says

3Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
4Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

and

25I was young and now I am old,
yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
or their children begging bread.

I've pursued my current plan of Bible reading since the year 2000 or so. So I've read these passages repeatedly the past nine and a half years. I've read them with openness, with edification, with acceptance.

But this past week when these verses came up, they evoked feelings of resentment, rejection, and fear.

For why?

Because given my situation in these economically-parlous times, they swept me back to the financially-strapped late '70s when I was subsisting as a newly-minted Bachelor of Architecture in the beautiful but heedless city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In that town and that economy I was unemployed more often than not. Frequently I had no idea where money for groceries was coming from, let alone the rent for my studio apartment. And acquaintances from the church I was attending, people who knew the paucity of my resources, would bombard me with these verses. It was their way of "ministering" to me. These verses were supposed to make everything All Better.

But they didn't. They made me feel alienated, excluded, and condemned.

Why should they? I was a Christian, after all. They should have filled me with hope and confidence in the Lord. Was I just hard of heart? Maybe a little, yes. But there was more to my desolation than than that.

These verses fell flat because they came alone. They weren't accompanied by the exegesis of my acquaintances' lives. How these people related to me did nothing to show me the true meaning of these texts or to discover to me the goodness and grace of Almighty God. They were too busy to be my friends, to just sit around and talk about everyday stuff as we got to know one another. No, I'd have chapter and verse references given to me at the last minute at the end of a Bible study. Or I'd find the text scotch-taped to my apartment door with no sign that the visit was about anything else.

These people had not yet earned the right to drop random exhortatory verses on me. I wanted friends and conversation and relationships, and what I got was Proverbs and Psalms used like robot arms to keep me at a distance. I needed information and referrals and connections on possible jobs, and they gave me Biblical magic formulas about how if I was righteous and godly enough, the positions and pay would simply come.

It felt like what it says in the Letter from James,

2:15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?

James could have added "emotional needs" as well. There is a time and a place to feed a Christian brother or sister from the Word, but it must never come alone. It's possible that a non-believer can also gain comfort from a quotation from the Scriptures, but there it's even more crucial that it be accompanied by the exegesis of our lives.

I've been thinking since last week on how that living exegesis would "read," about the overall love and grace of a Christian friend's conduct that would guarantee that Scripture snippets were received as the comfort they were meant to be. I need to contemplate further before I could venture to say anything about it, but I know that sort of "love with skin on" is vitally essential.

By today, I can again read the Proverbs 3 and Psalm 37 passages and see and feel their assurance and hope. My upset last week wasn't really about the verses per se, it was frustration and anger at myself that here it is thirty years later and I'm again in the same stinky financial position. But that's a different subject, and going and doing something useful now might have go some ways towards maybe getting myself out of it . . .

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Thirteen

Sunday, 18 December, 1988
Paris

Woke up around 7:00 AM with a stomachache. It was either food poisoning, indigestion, the flu that’s going around, or the approach of the wrong time of month. I chose to believe the last, having pills on hand to throw at that condition. So I took them then went back to sleep.

Nevertheless I did not feel too wonderful all day. Considered not getting up for Mass (à la Mexico City, 1970†) but decided I’d regret it if I didn’t.

So I put on my gray dress and went to Mass at Notre Dame. It’s rather odd-- the organ plays and they have readings and so forth between services. Meanwhile people are walking around taking pictures-- with flash-- and it’s a real zoo. Fortunately things calmed down for the service itself.

There was a copy in French and in three other languages of the readings. What I need is that and the actual eucharistic liturgy, in French. A copy of the sermon wouldn’t hurt, either. The priest spoke, I believe, on not making Christmas a surface thing. Very edifying, I’m sure, if I could’ve understood it.

I still did not feel at all well and hoped to gracious I would not have one of my famous Raging Hormonal Imbalances right in the middle of the service. But I survived to go up and take Communion (one kind only), and to come back to my seat and lose it.

Emotionally, I mean. It wasn’t being there, per se, that did it. It was more the feeling of oh, God, what am I supposed to be doing with my life, and if You don’t let me know, who will? I asked Him to give me some kind of sign as to what He wants me to do . . . somebody bringing something up in a conversation, maybe. I don’t know. What did He give Jim Leffel*‡ when he was struggling over accepting the call to Wilkes-Barre*?

Outside afterwards there was a rather ragtag group in front of the cathedral singing Christmas carols-- in English-- for the Armenian earthquake relief (and that’s what happened there, on top of the delicate political situation).

I headed north and had a bottle of Perrier at the first café I found open. I needed the bubbles. Stomach lousy. Between the Pompidou Center and Les Halles I made myself buy a crepe and eat it, but I wasn’t too happy about it.

Still, there were things I had to do today so I pushed myself. Had to find a florist to sell me some real flowers, for one. And as long as I was fairly close, I thought I’d go up to the Boulevards and see where Berlioz went to music school.

Found the fleurs first, near the rue Montmartre. I had to decide what he would like. I settled on a bunch of those small tulips, yellow and white and dark pink and variegated, with their green stems and leaves. Freesias would’ve done well, too, but the only ones they had were all yellow and looked like cheese popcorn. Definitely wrong.

Walked on over to where the Conservatoire is supposed to be, but unless there is another place in Paris with streets named rue Bergère and rue Faubourg de Montmartre, they’ve demolished the building that was there in the early 19th century and moved the school elsewhere.§ Still, to think that he walked there once, on that pavement, and passed through that air!

Took the Métro to Havre-Canmartin, where I encountered a check. The #13 line, which I needed for both la Cimetière Montmartre and for St. Denis [to see the famous abbey church] was closed. Went on to Villiers to at least reach the former and discovered the #6 line wasn’t going today, either. Transit strike on. So I went back to the Place Europe stop and walked it from there.

The cemetery is under the Rue Calincourt overpass, unlike what is shown on my map. Found the entrance down below, though, and inquired of the uniformed porter where to find it . . . Hector’s got a lane named after him there. And he’s not under the viaduct, thank God.

French urban cemeteries aren’t like American ones. They don’t go in for green grass and well-tended plots. They tend to be little necropoles of miniature chapels and temples all jumbled in cheek by jowl with only drear, sandy soil between.

But thank God, somebody has done something about that ghastly Beaux Arts horror of a tomb that Hector originally had, the picture of which I saw in a book in the Philadelphia Free Library. It was all redone in 1970 in black Andes granite (or something similar) with gold in the incised lettering. The portrait on the medallion isn’t as beautiful as it should be, it doesn’t properly convey his character, but everything is very well tended, there are cyclamens, the pretty dark pink kind, and healthy-looking shrubbery growing in pots that are an integral part of the monument, not like the desiccated chrysanthemums on some nearly tombs, and-- oh, God, Berlioz! Berlioz! I can’t-- I wish-- Oh, Lord, I-- and he’s-- I can’t express it!

One doesn’t go to pieces totally. One mustn’t. There are other people around every so often. And it’s not like he died recently or anything . . . let us be sensible.

I could take refuge in activity. I could at least give him what I brought him. Someone who came earlier had left him a bunch of white chrysanthemums (I was glad to see that); I unbound my tulips and laid them across the other flowers. And I knew I’d chosen the right thing. They’re like him, in a way. Straightforward, unpretentious, colorful in their way, but still sensitive to the rigors of the mundane.

There’s a tree there . . . its roots probably grow down into his grave. It’s very handy when you have no other shoulder to cry on . . . Though I’ve cried on his shoulder often enough, figuratively, singing his songs and reading his memoirs and his letters, taking comfort in knowing there was one who has been through it himself, who could express it all so as to draw it up into ineffable poetry and beauty, one who despite his sins and failings took the gift that God gave him and used it, sublimely . . . I couldn’t help it, I prayed again the prayer I’ve said for the past eleven years, that please, God, in Jesus’ Name, if he can’t actually be saved-- and if there’s any proper way he could be, please effect it!-- please allow his faithfulness to his gift and all the good he’s done through its fulfillment speak grace and amelioration for him in the judgement! Please!

There’s a cross engraved above his name on his monument. I hope it is not there for naught. I wish I could believe the Roman Catholic doctrine that you can be saved by being baptised as an infant. I cannot, but it would be a comfort.

I tried to sing the Te Decet Hymnus for him but my voice broke-- "Ad Te caro omnis veniet!" Yes, but how-- and in what spirit?

There were some fuzzy cats roaming around (none of them black) and one approached now and sat a little ways off, preening herself. I went over and patted her, and, unusually for a French cat, she responded to it. If she’d been [my own cat] Didon I’d’ve picked her up, but she was not.

Then I went back and stood once more before la noire tombe-- mon pauvre Hector! Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine!-- kissed my hand to him, and departed.

Hélas!

Found la Square Berlioz after that, not far from la Place Clichy. The statue there is of him as a younger man than on the medallion of the tomb. It was not carved out of very high quality stone-- it has deteriorated badly. I dislike seeing that. And somehow, though I’m glad he is honored in public sculptures like that, somehow seeing them makes him seem more distant, unlike the portraits. I’ve read that his portrait by Courbet is said to be the only one by that artist that has a spark of life. If so, I’m glad it was Hector’s. Nothing can portray him that does not give you those piercing, wonderful eyes.

The square is largely given over to a large sandbox where children play, and sandy paths where the kids were kicking around a soccer ball. I wonder what he’d think of having his statue placed in a playground. He wasn’t much good at children, except for his son Louis.

Since going to see the abbey church of St. Denis was a bust and it was getting on towards 4:00 anyway, I took the Métro back downtown and got off at the Opéra stop. Had to look at the building which, while not the one that Hector knew, yet houses the institution that only opened its doors to him once.

Ironically, they did the Damnation de Faust, as I saw on a poster in the lobby, on the 8th. If I’d known that I could’ve come in from Chartres, no problem. Damnation, indeed.

They had tours but I just didn’t feel up to it. Browsed the gift shop; they had enamelled composer pins, even one of Hector. But they were just too expensive: 70F.

Over then to les Galeries Lafayette to see if maybe they were running the same sale on slips their branch in Toulouse was.

They weren’t; moreover the only suitable kind of slip they did have was running 225F each and was made in the good old USA. I think I’ll wait till I get back to Oxford.

Close one on the escalator there. It was full of people and as we rode upwards, a fairly good-sized man in his 60's lost his balance just ahead of me. Only my never-that-strong and presently very fatigued left arm and hand desperately clutching the rail kept him and me and everyone else from falling like dominoes. I don’t even think I was holding the righthand rail. I just stiffened up and hoped he’d get his balance before I gave way, too. When he made a grab for the rail he pushed into me worse and I had to step back, crunching the toes of the guy behind me (who wasn’t being any help, I might add). Fortunately the older man regained his footing at that point and aside from a little soreness, I was ok.

Still can’t figure out how I did that. I was feeling extremely yucky. Thank God I was able to, though.

The store was packed with Christmas shoppers and decorated to the hilt. (It’s the same all over, isn’t it?) And then it has that immense stained glass dome over the central court.

Back towards the hotel on the Métro (I might use the busses if I had a bus map. But I don’t, so I don’t). Really dragging by now. Figured I’d better find some food though so I got some junk at a croissanterie on Boul. St. Michel.

Got it and me up to the room-- and just couldn’t face it. Changed my clothes and climbed under the bedspread. Was not going to make it to the organ concert at Notre-Dame at 5:45. No. Listened to the radio, BBC World Service. They were airing their worldwide request program, and played the Hallelujah Chorus. And for the third time today I broke down and cried. Oh, Lord Jesus, come quickly!

Made myself work at train schedules for the next two days but other than that accomplished nothing but sleep all evening.
__________________________
†I was part of a high school group that took an Easter weekend trip to Mexico that year. On the Saturday, I, like an idiot, Drank the Water, and woke up the next morning too sick to go to the American church for Easter service. Happily, it was a mild case of MR and passed off by late that afternoon.
‡The immediate past pastor of my home church in Kansas City.
§Turns out I'd come up with the wrong address. The old Conservatoire building was and is still there, three or four blocks away from where I was looking for it.

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Twenty-two

Friday, 7 April, 1989
Moatenden to Great Dixter to Bodiam to Hastings to Oxford
Day Twenty-two

Breakfast was in the big, low-beamed kitchen. Last night Mrs. Deane showed me one of the ceiling beams that some archaeologist was specifically interested in, as to its antiquity and date. Going from Cecil Hewitt I would’ve thought the original structure was rather different from what this other man had surmised, but then I’m just a novice at this sort of thing.

I’m afraid I was rather behind getting to the meal. But Mrs. Deane was quite cheerful about getting me my eggs on her big Aga-- after all, her son had just come in to eat, too; thereafter to help deal with some workmen who were expected in.

The Londoners were finishing their holiday today, too-- their daughter’s school was restarting soon. We all traded horror stories about driving in London, and then Mrs. Deane invited us to walk about in the garden, if we would, before we left.

Sadly, it’s still rather awry from the big storm in October of ‘87. She hasn’t been able to get the tree surgeons in to deal with all the broken limbs. And a lot of the plantings besides those trees were destroyed.

Still, it was nice to walk to the back of the garden and contemplate the daffodils beside the watercourse. Funny, but Mrs. Deane told me that the moat that gives the Priory its name was originally a dry one. Moatenden Farm, just across the moat to the north (and a separate property) has oast houses. Be fun to see inside one sometime.

Picked my way round to the front, to get a view of the 12th century bit in front. It’s mainly just the doorframe and so forth at the kitchen end-- the brick nogging dates, I’d say, from the late 1500s, early 1600s.

After I got my things together upstairs, I sat down and wrote postcards. That done, I settled accounts, loaded the car for the last time, then drove away south. Stopped in Headcorn, where I posted the cards. Great fun--it started raining, hard, as I dashed back to the car-- then just as quickly stopped again.

I thought of heading generally northwest, meeting up with the M25, then catching the M40 straight back to Oxford. That’d certainly get me there by car-turn-in time at 4:15. But it seemed rather dreary, and anyway the rate the M25 goes, I wasn’t so sure it’d be all that quick. Besides, I had a hankering to see the sea again, feeling I mightn’t get another chance while I’m over here. So on to the south it was.

I’d read somewhere that Great Dixter doesn’t open on weekdays till the end of May, but just for jollies I followed the lane to it when I hit Northiam, just to see.

Well, it is open weekdays, but not till 2:00 PM. Oh. Only 11:00 now. That’d mean another day’s car hire. Oh, well.

The man in the nursery, which was open, pointed out Bodiam Castle which you could just see on the horizon to the west, only about four miles away.

Well, why not?

So I followed the little lanes down and around and soon was there.

Bodiam Castle is such an odd little thing, especially after places like Warkworth and Caernarfon. It obviously meant business, sitting there so solidly in its wide moat. But still you get the impression of a small swaggering person who defies people to attack him. One backs off, just in case, but one is still left wondering if one’s leg is being pulled all along.

Worked my way round the moat counterclockwise, as the sun dove in and out of the clouds, till I reached the main entrance. Other visitors were going in and I decided that if admission was free, I’d look in. But if not, I hadn’t the time.

It was 90p. OK! It’s off again we are.

Wended along over to the A229, heading for Hastings. In Hastings the main roads don’t indulge in any such American nonsense as a bypass. No, the A229 went straight down to the seaside. There you pick up the A259 which runs parallel to the water, with the big hotels on one’s right.

The sea was in magnificent form today, sending great towers of spray over the sea wall and onto the windshield of the car where I’d pulled it over to get out and see. The waves thundered gloriously and I was sorry I had to be on my way so soon.

Decided to take the seaside road as much as I could. Went through Brighton, where I could glimpse the Royal Pavilion, freshly restored, I am told, on the right. And Shoreham by Sea, and on to Worthing.

It was there that I knew I’d have to give up my plan, for although it’s nowhere near high season a plethora of other trippers had the same idea I did, apparently. The sea road was incredibly clogged and slow. I made it partway through Worthing when, considering how shockingly fast time was getting on, I backtracked a ways then got myself onto the A27, a bit to the north.

That was much faster-- it even has dual carriageways in places-- and except for lacking the view of the Channel was just as pretty. I love so much to see the sheep on the sunlit green hillsides! It’s as if so many fluffy white flowers had sprung up and blossomed in the space of a night. And the view coming down the incline into Arundel is simply breathtaking. The castle and cathedral were bathed in light, made much more dramatic by the clouds gathering to the northwest.

Again, though, no time to stop-- I had to press on.

Not that I didn’t pull over a bit farther on-- I stopped and got out to take photos of the thunderheads piling up over the downs-- they looked so Midwestern!

As I entered Portsmouth, around 2:15, I saw that the needle on the petrol gauge was riding rather low. I started to look for a Shell station, figuring that since everyone’s gas is overpriced here I might as well patronise the oil barons my mother works for. And soon I spotted one-- on the far side of the divided road that the A27 becomes as it passes through the northern regions of the town. But there were no legal right turnings I could see for blocks and blocks.

So at next opportunity I made a left into a residential neighborhood, then another, then another, round the block hoping to find a cross street that’d intersect with the highway and allow me to backtrack to the filling station.

As I was on the northward leg of this square I passed a cyclist, giving him plenty of berth. At the end of the block I could see, as I approached, that the way ahead was blocked-- there was indeed a bridge over a stream or ditch, but closely-spaced bollards closed it to motor traffic.

Well, rot. I put on my turn signal in good time and when I reached the T-junction, turned left yet again.

All at once, I heard a bump on my left rear fender. A cry came from the road behind me, more of wrath than of pain. Chilled with apprehension, I stopped the car and looked back-- to see the cyclist lying on the ground just short of the intersection, his supine bicycle spinning its wheels beside him.

Well, you know me, especially when I’m tired and hungry and rather frightened besides. I ran back to the corner, grateful to see him getting to his feet, and said, "Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you! I’m so sorry! Are you hurt?"

The cyclist, a rather regimented-looking young man of about twenty-seven or so dressed in a BritRail messenger’s uniform, flexed his ankle and said, "Well, I suppose it’s all right," adding accusingly, "no thanks to you."

I went off on another volley of apologies and blametaking and he was well-satisfied to give me a grim little lecture on the rights of cyclists and the rules of the road. It was so shame-making-- for as one who for years got around mostly by bike, who should know such things better than I?

Then he got out his walkie-talkie, with another comment about how it wasn’t my fault that it wasn’t broken, and radioed his office, giving them the license plate number of the hire car and my driver’s license number and all the rest of it.

Immediately fears of horrendous lawsuits swarmed into my head-- maybe I wouldn’t be allowed to leave England. And whatever would the EuropCar people say?

Finally, as if he were a traffic cop and not an accident victim, he sent me on my way, saying cynically, "Next time you run down a cyclist, try a little harder-- maybe you’ll do a better job of it"-- as if I’d gone after him on purpose.

I found the way to the Shell station and got a fill up and a chocolate bar. I wondered morosely and guiltily what the attendants would say if they knew what I’d just done.

Continued on into Southampton, where I got a little lost trying to hook up with the A34 going north. It was around 3:00 by now and the primary schools, with all their uniformed scholars, were letting out. This forced me to take it specially slow-- another accident I did not need.

After I got on the A34 and up past Winchester, my head began to clear a bit and I got to wondering. How could that accident have been my fault, since he was the one who’d hit me, presumably as I’d turned the corner? And how, since I’d passed him about even with the previous cross street, had he managed to come up on me so fast, and why? And considering that I’d signalled for a left and the way ahead was blocked, how could he for a moment have thought that I wasn’t going to turn left, or have been such an idiot as to think he could pass me before I did? For afterwards he’d gone off straight ahead across the bollarded bridge.

And in place of my fear and guilt came a swell of anger-- anger at people who can so cleverly blame others for their own foolishness and at myself for habitually being such a patsy for that sort of person.

The day and my mood rapidly deteriorated as, short of Newbury, I came upon a backup that the radio said stretched out for ten miles and for which their traffic reporters would propose no explanation. All I knew was that it took a half hour to go five miles and my chances of making it to Oxford by 4:15 were to hell and gone.

When I got to Newbury, I discovered the problem-- It was simply the glut of Friday travellers and commuters taking their turns getting through the Newbury roundabout. Damn this road system! Haven’t these people heard of a proper interchange?

Thank God the road was clear after that.

I’d planned to reenter Oxford by the eastern bypass, by way of Littlemore and Cowley, but saw there was no way. It was 5:00 already and the hire office closed at 5:30. So I came up the West, got off onto the Botley Road, and wended my way through the rush hour traffic by way of Beaumont Street, finally reaching Banbury Road and Coverdale*.

Fast as I could, I emptied out the car, dumping my luggage in the basement flat [where I had been moved during the vac]. That done, I dashed back across the Chapel passage and back to the car.

Fought off the Oxford traffic back to the Botley Road. There I perpetrated an act that put the crown of absurdity on this whole confounded trip-- I mistook, or misremembered, the way into the carpark for the shopping center where the hire place is. Instead I found myself on the highway on-ramp and thence heading southbound back down the A34.

I didn’t care who heard me, I screamed in frustration! In an access of self-disgust, not to say self-destructiveness, I gunned the engine and as my speed mounted I didn’t give a holy damn if I were arrested for speeding or cracked up the car or committed whatever other mayhem.

But I couldn’t help but see the Palm Sunday cross that’d been hanging from the rearview mirror ever since Saffron Walden. And a more sensible voice reminded me of what a bad witness it’d be if I did something foolish with that present to proclaim me a Christian. Chastened, but still very upset, I slowed down and turned left into what I discover is Yarnells Road. This took me to North Hinksey Lane and back to the Botley Road.

This time, I didn’t miss the turning to the car park. And thank God, though it was 5:40 the EuropCar office was still open. I told them about the cyclist and filled out a report on the smashed door I so cleverly acquired in Stamford. The girl at the counter agreed that my second-thoughts version of the encounter in Portsmouth was probably the accurate one. She told me not to worry, they’d take care of it, since it was properly reported to them and she’d taken the particulars down from me in writing.

I couldn’t get my deposit back yet, as all the cash was locked up for the weekend. And I nearly forgot my Palm Sunday cross, running back to retrieve it.

I did not take a bus back to Oxford. I’d had enough of vehicles for quite awhile. Instead I loitered along the Botley Road, pausing to inspect the little ramifications of the Thames as they passed under each bridge I crossed. I stopped to see the locks at the Osney Bridge, coming down into East Street for a closer view. At one point, I passed a young guy who was trying to hitch a lift into Oxford. I nearly laughed in amusement as I told him, upon his inquiry, that the city was only a short distance ahead-- he’d might as well walk. Everything was bathed in a golden western light and as calm returned I felt a great sense of proprietary affection for my city as it appeared ahead.

And so to New Road, round by the castle mound, and thus by Queen Street to Carfax. It was a little short of 7:00 and I just had time to pop into the Coop on Cornmarket for some milk and other supplies.

Thus provisioned, I strolled up Magdalen, up St. Giles, and finally to the Banbury Road and Coverdale College*.

I’ve been utterly useless the rest of this evening. I made myself supper and took forever eating it at the desk in the little bedroom down here. And, ignoring the luggage that wants to be unpacked, I’ve finished reading Scott’s Heart of Mid-Lothian (and rot him, need he be so predictably moralistic in the end?).

The college is still overrun with those absurdly embarrassing students from Bemidji, Minnesota, and I still don’t know how I shall deal with the problem between Lukas* and me. But away with all that for now-- I’m back at Coverdale*, thank God, I’m home at last, I’m home!

Buck Up

I usually wake in the morning to a news-talk station. But it hasn't been anything worth waking up to lately. If it isn't all about how the stock market is down and the world economy's in the tank, it's about how the stock market is up and that means in another day or so it'll be really down, putting the economy even deeper in the tank.

Some commentators seem to take a sordid pleasure in exclaiming for two hours straight how This Is Just a Taste of It and It'll Get Unimaginably Worse Regardless of Who's Elected President, etc., etc., etc.

How incredibly, uselessly depressing. What I'm not hearing is what any of us can do about it. Listening to these guys, nothing. We're all going to hell in a handbasket and they won't even let us enjoy the slide.

This has had an odd, counterintuitive effect on me.

I've not been feeling too lively for quite awhile, not having a proper job and surrounded with house-renovation mess that will get a lot messier before it gets better. But with things in the general culture being the way they are, I've decided to buck up.

Why? Because since all these temporal props are being kicked out from under all of us, I'm getting it through my thick head to rely on the only solid foundation there is or ever has been, which is almighty God revealed in His Son Jesus Christ.

Did Jesus ever promise His followers would always be prosperous and well-fed? No. Did He ever swear we'd always have plenty in the bank and our own roof over our heads? No. Did He ever covenant with us that we'd die in our beds of peaceful old age? No, again.

But He did promise that where He is, there His servants would be. He said that we should be of good courage, for He has overcome the world. He said we should lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven, that will never wear out or rot or decay. He said all authority in heaven and on earth is given to Him, and He is with us to the end of the age.

If Jesus had been only a man, those promises wouldn't mean beans. But given that He's the Son of God, with all the perquisites and endowments that that implies, His mere presence with us gives us more than the most healthy economy ever could, and that's even before you tally in all the other blessings of heaven and eternal life.

So I've decided to get my vision straight and buck up. I don't say Jesus is gonna get me a job, but letting Him give me perspective will get me further towards that goal. And maybe things will get as bad as the radio pundits say. Maybe. But we humans can't screw things up so badly as to keep God from bringing good out of it.

And in the meantime, I'm not messing with things I can't help. My radio alarm now set to the classical station.

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Eleven

Monday, 27 March, 1989
Iona to Helensburgh
Day Eleven, Easter Monday

My attempts to get to sleep last night looked for awhile to be quite in vain, as Therese* contracted a bad case of diarrhea of the mouth. She started rambling inanely on and on about her adventures in prep school till I had a terrible case of the giggles and Marie* nearly came over and killed her. Still, in a perverse way it was nice, because predominantly it seemed hilariously funny and not a cause for rancor at all.

Dragged myself out at 4:15 nonetheless and got everything packed up in the nick of time. Marie*, bless her, got up and dressed just to see me off, though I nearly had a heart attack at the jetty when my backpack, which she had carried out for me, was momentarily nowhere to be found. I’m afraid I didn’t impress anyone with my maturity for a minute or two . . . All the suppressed stress threatened to come out at this least opportune of moments. Thankfully, it was found and all was well with the luggage.

Raining again, of course, and pitch black, except for the lights, so no photos of the Sound of Iona again.

Not a hell of a lot to say about the trip to Oban, besides that I’m glad to have a reasonable set of sea legs. Makes boat trips much more enjoyable. As for my hope of talking to Lukas* on the Mull bus, forget it. He was still thoroughly occupied with one of the girls from the abbey program. If I did fancy him I could’ve felt jealous, but as it was I was merely disgusted at his incredibly rude behavior at not even greeting me this morning, especially after what happened in Communion yesterday. I don’t know what he did on the ferry to Oban; he retired to the boat’s cafeteria for some breakfast and I ascended to the observation deck.

There I was kept amused by the Tzubekis’* little girl Tumelo* and her friend, the little son of another African family that had been on Iona, and was able to be useful in taking a picture of the two families out on the boat’s deck.

A short time later we docked in Oban and I lugged my stuff to the Astra, which thankfully was still there in the BritRail parking lot, undisturbed. As I was stowing my things in the trunk I thought about Lukas* and wondered what Jesus would do in this situation.

My inclination was to bitterly say to hell with Mr. Renzberger* and drive off. The positive and mannerly thing would be to go back to the train station and wish him a good trip. Who knows what Lukas* would’ve preferred, but as far as I could tell, Jesus would do the positive thing.

So back I went, to wish him well and to inquire civilly after his further plans. Well, said he formally and distantly, he’d be up in Inverness for awhile and then after that, who knows; he didn’t have to be back at Coverdale* when the regular students did and he might not return till after the 20th. Charming, considering he’d said before the end of Hilary Term that he’d definitely be back the week of April 9th and had accepted my invitation to dinner . . .

Hell, what would Jesus do in a situation like that? Jesus has the advantage of knowing that it isn’t any sin He’s committed that’s making another give him the brush-off. But I can’t help but wonder what the hell is it I’ve done to offend Lukas*, that he should treat me so badly.

My tiredness and lack of sleep and the stress of driving on wet, narrow, twisty, rock wall lined roads added no good to my state and the only thing that prevented me from breaking down crying right there at the wheel was the knowledge that if I was blinded by tears a serious accident could ensue.

But as soon as I reached Inverary I stopped and bought a pastry and a bit of bread and cheese to eat. And I got a postcard and wrote and sent it to Friedhelm* [a German theology student who'd spent only Michaelmas Term at Coverdale*] . Friedhelm*, to my recollection, though at times reserved, never acted like a jerk. I miss Friedhelm* a great deal.

After that I made it down to Helensburgh without having an accident, despite more rock walls and being stuck for a long time behind a trailer being drawn by one of those ridiculous three-wheeled mini-cars.

When I got into town I parked the car at the lot by the big Clyde estuary and went and got a cup of tea and another cake (just what I needed, more sugar). Back to the tourist office then and found out the way to Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House.

Still thinking about this thing with Lukas*, though. The only thing I can conceive that I could’ve done to offend him is to be myself, who I am. But you can’t go to another human being and say, "Forgive me for living"-- because that’s not your fault, it’s God’s. They should take it up with Him. Still, I don’t know what’ll be worse-- if we get along terribly once we’re back at Coverdale* or if he’s sweet and nice again and I suppress all my anger at him because I’m afraid this weekend was all my fault or because I don’t want to rock the boat.

The Hill House was swathed in scaffolding and translucent plastic, to repair the exterior surfacing. But it was still open inside. It was thoroughly a matter of "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!" as in its perfection of proportion and decoration and detailing it is excruciatingly beautiful. Especially when I came into the drawing room, with that white bay window flooded with light, I just wanted to sit down and weep for the sheer loveliness of it.

But you can’t-- all the chairs say "Do not sit!" on them. And the place was flooded with other people, all talking in whispers as if they were in church . . . funny, when you consider all the children the Blackies had, and how they must’ve gone running and shouting up and down those gracefully-ornamented stairs.

Seeing all the custom designed furnishings and fittings, I had to think of Eric* [the architect I'd worked for for over seven years] and the work he does, that I used to do with him . . . And to wonder if the design I did for the Griffons* just before I left Myron’s* [the architect I'd been working for up to the time I left for Oxford] has been built, and if so, how properly.

Because although it costs more now and the craftsmen are hard to find, this sort of thing can still be done. Maybe not the amazing curves in the furnishings, but the inlays and repoussés, yes.

It’s good to have all the rooms I’ve seen in photographs now totally assembled and arranged in proper order in my head. It’s now a house, and not an artifact.

It’s hard to know what to say about it all; let the photographs I took speak for me. But it makes me what to get back to designing myself, and if my work should have a bit of Mackintosh influence in it, so be it. Originality cannot come to life fully blown, it must pass through many stages and influences first. (Or so I tell myself in resolved self-correction, for my lack of productivity as an artist is largely due to my feeling that if what I’m about to do isn’t going to come out a masterpiece it oughtn’t to be done at all.)

It is so wonderful to see how everything flows together to make a total design, and good to know that the clients do exist who are willing to help make it happen.

I wandered round the garden afterwards. The rose bushes were just coming into leaf. Stylized roses within, real roses without. But these were also stylized in their way, being trained to the lines that Mackintosh drew, as individual trees or as intertwined arches. I wondered about the suitability of this, but may not a cultivated rose, which is not strictly a "natural" object after all, rejoice to find itself accorded a part in a great artist’s vision?

Perhaps someday I’ll see it all in bloom. Then I’ll be better able to tell if he was right.

Thereafter drove back down to the city center and waterfront and got the lady at the Tourist Bureau to book me a room at a Helensburgh B&B. No way I was going to make it to Glasgow tonight. Too damn tired.

Before going over I found a place to sell me more 400 Ektachrome. Yes, I’m out again. Six rolls, another minor fortune on the Visa.

Had a dickens of a time finding the place I’d been sent to, and when I arrived the lady apologised but they’d just been painting the walls and her husband had vetoed the idea of taking in any guests till the paint was thoroughly dry. They’d already fixed me up at another place, though, and I set out in search of it.

More fun with that; had to stop at a gas station where one of the clerks called the place and got more specific directions.

So I finally landed around 6:30. Lovely house, lovely hostess, tea and biscuits on a tray-- but God, that room was cold. I suppose I was hungry but I was too exhausted to move. I just put on another sweater and sat huddled in a chair, trying to make sense of this weekend but unable to maintain a continuous string of coherent thought.

Gave up around 9:00 and got into bed but stress kept me awake quite awhile longer. The noise from the TV down the foyer made lightnings go off in my head, just like Daddy used to have after his head injury . . . I wonder if he knew a lot of that was probably stress.

I wonder if I was the cause of a lot of it . . .

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Ten

Sunday, 26 March, 1989
Iona
Day Ten, Easter Sunday

Odd thing at breakfast. For some reason they toast only white bread here, and put it out on toast racks to get cold, while the wheat bread sits in the basket untoasted. A couple days ago I located the toaster in the kitchen and as it worked like the kind we have at Coverdale* I’ve been nipping back to do myself some wheat toast, properly hot. This morning I took orders for some others at the table and came back to do them, seven slices in all. Jeannie Brownlea*, one of the older members of the MacLeod Center party, was back there on the same errand. I told her what I was there for and she said, "I’ve got six in here already. Is that enough?"

"No, I need seven."

"But I’ve got six in here."

"That’s all right, but I need seven. I’ll do more."

"There’s no more wheat bread."

"Oh. Well. Well, don’t worry about it. We’ll make do."

"Is six enough?"

"Well, we wanted seven . . . "

I haven’t recalled this word for word, I’m sure. The point is that she kept making all sorts of suggestions that simply ignored the mathematical realities (especially if she’d been planning any of the wheat toast she was making to go to her own table) and I could not make her understand otherwise.

Whereupon she rounds on me and says, "I think you hate me. I can tell these things and I really think you hate me."

The uncomfortable thing is that I am not entirely innocent of negative attitudes in her regard; she is in her late 60s or so and has the look of the kind of woman who appears in Presbyterianews as having loudly supported some outmoded and anti-Christian liberal cause at the last General Assembly. And I confess I find her hovering, birdlike intensity is a bit wearing. But I also know that many people who have at first struck me unfavorably eventually have been revealed as worthy of esteem. And even if not, "hate" is too personal, energised, and involved a word for her in this situation.

The joke is, that my "hating" her is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. For now I do want to avoid her, if only because she’s the uncomfortable type of person who takes a conversation onto a personal level in the most inappropriate circumstances. If she were my age I would tell her so. But because of her years I need to keep my distance-- and keep my mouth shut.

After breakfast somebody came in and said we were supposed to be doing toilets right then, just like yesterday and the day before. Not bloody likely. I have to get dressed for church.

Wore the gray corduroy skirt and the silk blouse, with silk longies under. Bright pink wool Shetland sweater over, but the only real concession I made to possible foul weather was donning my black suede boots instead of dress flats over my white WinterAlls stockings. Dammit, it’s Easter and I am not wearing my blue corduroy jeans to church. Especially because I am not feeling the impact of the occasion, it’s essential I keep up the ceremonies, to prevent me from degenerating entirely.

Karen* and Therese* conspired to put up my hair and I donned my blue silk Liberty scarf. When I assayed the makeup Karen* said, "Are you trying to seduce the priest?"

"I’m trying to figure out if there is a priest around here!" Three days of services already and I still don’t know who’s in charge.

More half-baked drama in the cloister beforehand, a somewhat silly updating of the Road to Emmaus story. But I expect that by now.

And there was actually a sermon during the service proper, by a big mucky-muck of the Community who came in from Glasgow or somewhere. Full of the meaning of Easter as it bore on all sorts of bad social and political situations. Not bad for its kind, very applicable and cogent, but I’m starving for some Scriptural exposition. Then he ended up referring to the Holy Spirit as "she" again and what could I do but put up with it?

To do him justice he did mention the plight of people around us, but I-- I feel I have no right to feel any hurt, having been in no wars and no long term deprivation . . . Not physically, at least. Marie* was talking last night (after she’d decided it was her fault Seamus* was acting like a jerk) about the need not to want things as we’d like them . . . Right. So let’s forget about loving or being loved and become Stoics or Buddhists. There is a Christian renunciation but how it works is a mystery to me.

I thought as hard as I could about Nigel*, down in S--, in church, maybe with Emily*? trying to cope with the rotten situation going on in his family, and I was thinking Bless him, bless him, O Lord; since I can receive no blessing, grace him with my share even now . . .

But more I am aware of Lukas*, and unavoidably think of the song "Easy to Be Hard":

How can people have no feelings?
How can they ignore their friends?
Easy to be hard,
Easy to be cold.

’Specially people who care about strangers,
Who care about evil, and social injustice!
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend?
I need a friend . . .

And here it is Easter, and there he is, one of three pairs who will administer the Sacrament, and here I am, feeling cold and dead and entombed still, wishing I were a million miles away. But I am gripped cruelly by the stranglehold of present reality, seeing that though we celebrate Christ’s resurrection every Easter, that each Easter I rise with Him less and less, till some time soon I will revive not at all and stay closed in the tomb forever.

And then, O God, the three pairs took up their stations and we were instructed to receive from those closest, and I was in the aisle seat in the crossing, and Lukas* and his partner were assigned to the crossing. I couldn’t convince myself that he hadn’t seen me sitting there, thus freeing me to receive down front. Doing it under his eye would have been a demonstration of personal feeling that even I, degenerate though I am, recognised to be dreadfully out of place.

So I was doomed to be where I was. I let many people into the line ahead of me, trying to put it off as long as possible. But it couldn’t be avoided.

The girl who was distributing the bread gave me much too big a piece. But I confess I probably would’ve choked on it anyway, however small, my mouth was so dry. There was no time to get it down before I’d stepped over and stood in front of-- whom? My friend? Don’t make miserable jokes. This time I won’t comprehend.

I didn’t want to look at him but I had to, to keep from dropping or spilling the chalice. And as I received the wine he stood there with his hands outstretched as if in blessing. And he looked straight into my eyes, the most intimate of smiles in his own, as if he were saying, "Take, drink, I share this with you!"

And I don’t know what mine said back, but they wanted to scream, "Lukas Renzberger*, are you trying to kill me? What is this mockery? You pretend to offer me Communion-- why can’t you maintain it in our daily lives?"

My misery was such that I could hardly stand. I felt very, precipitously, close to committing the unforgivable sin of falling down crying before him, as if somehow I could beg and plead the caring, considerate Coverdale* version of him to please, please take me in his arms and let me cry out all the hurt and turmoil-- not as prelude to any claim upon him, but as a support, till I could stand alone again.

But I controlled myself long enough to get back to my seat, though I couldn’t produce the words of the Communion hymn. I dared not cry; he was too close. I was too exposed.

Then the service was over and everyone went back out into the cloister. The fiddle played, the flutes piped, the little choir sang. And those who were moved to, danced around the daffodil-bedecked cross that had been placed against the Lipschitz sculpture at the cloister garth’s center. I stood there woodenly looking on, but forced myself to understand that if Lukas* should happen to see me there alone, he would probably conclude that I had come up to Iona just to be with him, and was refusing now to be with any other.

So I exerted myself to put on a social façade, a process aided by the suggestion? command? made inside the church that when the remains of the Communion bread went around we were to share it with someone we didn’t know. Fortunately I didn’t have to choose with whom in all that vast crowd of strangers I would share with; an abbey staff person named Fiona*-- I think she’s in the choir-- came up and offered me a bit of hers. There were enough safe topics to talk about there, so that was ok until I felt I’d put in my time and could leave.

There was a seminar afterwards, back at the Center. I was a good girl and went, though for a moment it threatened to be disastrous. The topic today was Joy, and the woman leading was eliciting things each of us were feeling joyful about. I was afraid we were going to have to go around and speak each in turn, and I was hovering so close to the surface of brutal honesty that I wouldn’t’ve made things very pretty.

But thank God, the discussion got off on the difference between joy and happiness, especially as it related to the case of the Tzubeki* family, who are here in Scotland studying in Edinburgh, and trying to get political asylum from South Africa. So Caroline Tzubeki* kept the floor most of the time, talking about life in Soweto, which I found a salutary distraction in more ways than one.

It’s a real temptation for me to want to say to her, "What are you complaining about? You’ve got your nice husband and your beautiful little girl. You don’t have to face your problems alone!" Which shows you what a selfish degenerate I’ve become, and where I think the answer to all my problems lies . . .

Wrote a poem about this morning at Communion during the seminar. Always helps, turning hurt into art. That is if it is art. Maybe that’s what I’ll find out if I can get a creative writing tutor next term. I don’t want my work merely to be the emotional and verbal equivalent of a trip to the toilet. And I’ve seen much so-called poetry that so obviously is.

Easter dinner was pleasant. Great triumph of sentiment over principle-- we had ham. And it was good ham, too.

And they’d scrounged some more construction lumber scraps to build the fire with. I know that’s full of creosote-causing preservatives and isn’t half so hotly-burning as coal, but it has the blessed advantage of being a heck of a lot easier on the nose and the lungs, especially as this fireplace here doesn’t draw worth a poop. (Practically brand-new and there’s soot all the way up the chimney breast.) This weekend’s the first time I’ve ever experienced a coal fire, and I regret to say that it smells like what we would at home call a very bad case of pollution. I can’t believe people put up with it.

But it was wood at dinner today, and that was a relief.

Yesterday evening in the laundry room the housekeeper told me that due to the Easter Monday bank holiday there’ll be only one bus across Mull tomorrow. And to get it we’ll have to catch the Iona ferry at 5:30 in the morning. At dinner, then, I discussed with one of the men here the possibility of hitching a lift with him across Mull a little later, since he brought his car as far as Fionnphort. He says it depends on whether the Mull to Oban ferry is running more than once tomorrow.

To me, it depends upon what Lukas’s* plans are, for in this I do want to accord my actions to his. Perhaps he just wants to spend all the time he can now with his new friends. But when everyone leaves there’s a chance we can have a nice companionable chat on the bus, my tensions towards him can be relaxed, and I won’t go off feeling as I did after I left him in Switzerland last December. And I might find out what happened in Liverpool. There is to be a ceildhe tonight here; I could make myself inquire casually after his plans then.

Wrote postcards to friends in the States after dinner. Funny, but I forgot to take them to the postbox at the abbey when I went over there to buy my obligatory Iona sweatshirt. Not 100% sure why I got one of those, but I did. Burgundy red, medium. And a detailed map of the island. It’ll help me label my slides later.

Still overcast but the wind has died down considerably today. So around four o’clock I set out to do a bit of the hillwalking I actually came to Iona for. Left my skirt on-- a romantic fancy, I suppose-- and simply pulled the blue hiking socks over my winter weight stockings.

Set off more or less to the west. I was actually aiming for the high point north of the MacLeod Center but the fences kept getting in my way. I am told that since this is National Trust land it’s ok to walk anywhere, but you’d never know it from the lack of gates and stiles. There were a lot of other people about, so if they could find ways through, so could I.

Going out was definitely a good idea. I don’t say anything so silly as that the necessity of choosing to which tussock or stone to step next puts one’s interpersonal problems into perspective. But the mental and physical occupation does blunt some of the emotional sting as you run over the problems in your head.

Thinking about it thus, it seems to me that the best explanation may be that Lukas* is one of those people who assigns others to specific times and places, and if a friend steps out of that frame they’re out of place and can legitimately be ignored. As soon as they put themselves back, all again is well. Because I cannot come up with anything I have done to offend him and I refuse to believe he’s being calculatedly mean. I do think he’s being thoughtlessly rude, though. And it doesn’t become him at all.

The barren yet varied landscape with its muted tones and textures played harmony to my overall melancholy, which thankfully was able to be expressed in music. Bless you, Lord, for allowing me my top notes and good wind today, so that I could produce a satisfactory and sustained sound despite the scrambling around I was doing. It was even more satisfactory in that after awhile, as I moved further inland, there was absolutely no one else around to hear me, except for the sheep. They paid strict attention, wanting to make sure this strange noisy creature meant them no harm, and they’d stop grazing and stare and stare until satisfied I was harmless.

Sur les monts les plus sauvages,
Que ne suis-je un simple pasteur?

I tried to sing some Easter hymns but I kept getting the verses scrambled. And so fell back on Berlioz and Schubert. Dear Hector! Why are you dead and gone? I think you would’ve so much enjoyed walking these hills . . . You might even have been able to deal with me. But thank God, your music goes with me, even if you cannot.

There’s so much amazing vegetation out on the moors. There is a lot of a low-growing evergreen sort of groundcover, whose new growth comes up red. And this soft black moss, like velvet, that grows on the rocks. I don’t know if its color comes from the peaty soil (i.e., it’d be green elsewhere) or if it is an example of planned symbiosis between plant and site. Whichever it is, it's marvellous in its subtle beauty.

I wandered as far as the sea at the Mhachair on the west side of the island. The sun was peeking in and out, laying silver bands of brilliance upon the water. Somebody had stamped his initials in the wet sand of the beach, which was a pity. But still I could enjoy the silence that was only augmented by the surging of the waves and the high mewling cries of the gulls.

It was getting up towards 6:00 by now but I wasn’t particularly concerned, since Summer Time came on last night. Still, I felt I’d better head back. Did indulge in a scenario of what if I were benighted and the gales came back and . . . But I decided it wouldn’t be feasible to perish out there tonight. I hadn’t any paper or pen with me to write and apologise to my mother for being such a bother-- and to thank Nigel* (in a discreet manner of course) for how good he’s been to me. As for Herr Renzberger*, he wouldn’t get any coverage, and good enough for him, too.

After awhile, though, increasing fatigue made undivided attention to picking my footing and making sure I was headed in the right direction supersede any such thoughts. The ground, understandably, was thoroughly soaked and two or three times, despite my best care, I slipped on grassy slopes and arose with a glaring souvenir of bog mud on my left side and back. (This was deliberate-- the right side, where I carry my cameras, must be protected.)

Thought I’d make for the beach on the north end of the island and follow it round to the road I took yesterday. But when I got up there I was further to the west of it than I thought and only steep rocks led to the sea. So I headed for the next landmark I knew, the great high point of the Dun, I think it’s called. Wanted to go up it before; now it was the best idea since from its top I’d be able to see the abbey and the Center and I’d know exactly where I was. And so I did eventually reach the summit, and added my stone to its cairn (no one has told me so, but that seemed like the proper thing to do).

Couldn’t stay up there admiring the view, though, for inevitably it began to rain. Straight down rain, thankfully, but not what you want to stand about in anyway. My shoes were long since thoroughly soaked and now the rest of me had a chance to join the party, if I didn’t get moving.

Carefully down the slope, through a few more bogs, across another burn or two, and then, finally, through a gate into a farmer’s field that was so thoroughly squelching with mud that there wasn’t any point in being careful about it. Then out the gate to the road and on through the rain to shelter as quickly as possible.

But I still had breath for what was important, and be hanged to any German-speakers who might hear me as I drew near to the abbey:

Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden
Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,
Hast du mein Herz im warmer Liebe entzunden,
Hast mich in eine bessre Welt entrückt,
In eine bessre Welt entrückt!

It was past 7:30 when I got back. There was a wedding in the abbey church at 6:00 with a reception after that that everyone was invited to, which of course I’d missed. But I can go to weddings anywhere. Only in Scotland can I have the exquisite fulfillment of slogging through peat bogs and being a better person for the experience.

First item of importance, take a shower. Second thing, wash out the filthy shoes and clothes and put them in the drying room. And hope they’re ready to be packed by tomorrow.

Changed into my other skirt and made my appearance at the ceildhe after 9:00 (it started at 8:30). By then I was so tired I didn’t really care, but had decided enough of this crap, I had to talk to Lukas*.

The dances were all of the country variety, but unlike at Coverdale* at Christmas nobody taught them. It was like my home church choir director and the "Hallelujah Chorus"-- no rehearsal time because of course you’re born knowing it. It was pretty funny, because the PA system went down and you couldn’t hear the fiddle or guitars at all, but only the thump of the tambour and the shouts of the dancers counting steps in largely-vain attempts to keep themselves straight.

I didn’t dance; you needed a partner and I was too physically tired to make the effort to choose somebody to ask. Lukas* was keeping himself thoroughly occupied on the floor, a fact which at another time I would’ve witnessed with vicarious pleasure and satisfaction. Just now, however, it only filled me with the cynical sense that well, our little world of this weekend is yet proceeding according to its own established order . . .

But I did get a chance to talk to him a little while he was sitting one out. A bit of chitchat about the dancing, then a casual question as to whether he was leaving tomorrow morning or staying till later. He replied that it was tomorrow morning or nothing, so I kept my mouth shut about the possibilities of rides across Mull later in the day. If I appear on the jetty in the midst of the rest of the sleep-benumbed throng tomorrow at 5:30 AM, he will have no reason to impugn my motives.

I told him I’d just been on a three and a half hour hike around the island. He immediately countered with the statement that last Wednesday he, along with the rest of the abbey group, had gone on a six-hour "pilgrimage" around Iona, visiting all the famous hermitages and other religious sites, and, in the process, establishing a wonderful bond among them all. That, I thought, was tolerably obvious.

I wanted to say something that would reveal even to me myself that I could rejoice with him in this, but I couldn’t manage it. So I sufficed with something on the order of "That’s nice," and said we at the Center weren’t so fortunate, as having to spend so much time in services and other activities we hadn’t much chance to form interpersonal relationships. "I’m afraid there was rather more program than I’d bargained for, though I suppose I should’ve expected it . . . "

"But you didn’t have to attend all those things! You could have done other things if you’d liked!"

Oh? Maybe so, but that’s not the way I was raised.

The last dance was played around 10:40 and then the abbey group members took turns taking funny pictures of their assemblage. It briefly flitted through my mind to offer to take one of them all to give to Lukas* at Coverdale*. But just as quickly I knew that’d be meddling impertinence. Besides, I’m sure he’s already got someone pledged to send him a copy of theirs.

So I took off for the laundry room to see to the last bit of wash that was still soaking in the sink, and so much for my first Scottish ceildhe . . .

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Nine

Saturday, 25 March, 1989
Iona
Day Nine, Holy Saturday

Another session this morning, which I wasn’t particularly keen to go to. The handout had a poem in it, and I had to make myself see my apathy in that I couldn’t even identify with it, though the situation the poet described could be considered very close to my own. "That’s his problem," I tend to think.

But the sun was still out afterwards, and I walked to the beach at the north end of the island, joined for awhile by Marie*, one of the other women in my dorm room. Today you could see the peaks of Mull, with one tallish one all covered in snow. And I could observe the horses out running, and the red-feathered chickens, and the sober black-faced sheep, and the shaggy Highland cattle. A lark was singing high overhead, the first I’d ever seen or heard.

Marie* turned back when we approached the beach, as the sea air breezes give her sinus trouble. But I went all the way down to the rocks and looked out at the little islands across the water. There were cattle grazing among the washed-up kelp and sea gulls crying overhead. This is what I came to Iona for . . . instead I’m spending most of my time so far sitting in church and not in particularly satisfying church, either.

After a hurried lunch (I was late getting back; it was vegetarian again) I did more handwash. Only this time the spin-dryer really got off balance and the plastic baffle affair you put on your clothes really got chewed to heck. At least it’s only that and not the machine itself.

Finally got around to writing Daddy a note for his birthday. Took it down to the village to mail it, borrowing a piece of tape from a store clerk when the envelope gum refused to stick.

There were children in the lane playing with pieces of styrofoam insulation that the wind had blown away from the Center construction materials depot yesterday. No telling where the rest of it is now.

Stopped into the Abbey bookstore and only bought a few postcards. Christine MacLean was there and I told her about the spin dryer baffle. She said not to worry; she doubted it could be that bad.

So I came back and did my best to destroy it some more, doing more wash that wouldn’t fit in the first time around. Actually, I have gotten the hang of how to stop the machine before too much damage is done.


I’m not sure what to make of Karen* and Therese*, the two other girls in my dorm. Therese* is a vegetarian but she smokes, so I suppose her motivation for not eating meat is concern for animals and not care for her own health. Karen* puts on the most outrageous airs and tells whopping tales that you simply can’t believe. Where they are as Christians I can’t tell at all, because although they seem to be into things that smack terribly of New Age spaceheadedness I couldn’t say if they’d go along with the rest of the N.A. program or if they simply have certain ecological, etc., concerns in common with New Agers. And I haven’t got the energy to get into a debate about it.

Besides, I find they have a streak of cynicism about the whole programmatic structure here that I find all too easy and amenable to identify with. They cheerfully sleep through anything they please. I have punted a seminar or two already but I don’t feel too confident about it.

But I tell myself I can sit in church meetings anywhere, and these aren’t particularly effective or fulfilling church meetings, I feel so out of fellowship here (Palm Sunday service in March was much better). But only here (in light of my schedule) can I walk along the hills and beaches of Scotland, and that’s what I came here to do.

If it would stop blowing and sleeting for an hour together!

Yes, it started again this afternoon, almost as bad as before. I’m glad I dug out my silk longies at the last minute before I left Oxford.


Saw the film The Mission in the chapterhouse of the abbey this evening. I’d been wanting to see that. Problematic picture. One knows that love is more powerful in the long run but still I found myself wanting to root for the priests who chose to fight, who left the way of peace. Maybe it’s because I’m rather angry right now, at things in particular, and those people were doing what I felt. More objectively, it seems as if the people in the story failed to ask the essential question. And that is, if we have to cease to follow Christ in order to preserve the Jesuit Order, what the hell use is the Jesuit Order?

Or any church institution, for that matter?

Marie*, who also saw it, thinks it was done from a liberation theology viewpoint and of necessity would glorify the priests who chose to fight. I didn’t see it as quite that severely slanted but she has a point, anyway.

She’s a funny person. She’s going through a divorce, or has just gotten one, I’m not sure which, and her emotions are extremely volatile. At one point she’ll be telling you how incredibly high and happy she’s feeling in the experience of being here and two hours later she’s crying her eyes out. Or she speaks of how calm she feels-- but confesses she’s been chain-smoking since she arrived.

There is something in the way of an explanation, though. She also has a friend attending the abbey program, who, like Lukas*, apparently hasn’t been acting all that friendly. But it’s worse for her-- she confesses she has been in love with him and he knows it. And seemingly he’s attempting to squelch it in that disgusting wet-blanket male way.

It was enough like my situation that in the tea time between the video and the vigil service at 11:15 PM I pointed out Lukas* and told her why I could empathise with her problem, even though mine isn’t exactly analogous. I was even so reckless as to admit that though I don’t fancy Mr. Renzberger* in that way there is another Coverdale* student I wish I could, except that he’s thoroughly taken . . .

But I think that was mostly to keep her from thinking I did like Lukas* the same way she likes her recalcitrant friend Seamus*-- as well as for the sheer pleasure of speaking about Nigel* even without actually naming him.

The rotten thing is, the more Lukas* acts like a complete jerk and вопреки, the more important he’s becoming to me. He didn’t come to the video and I found myself regretting his absence. And seeing him across the room with his new friends, acting as if I didn’t exist, made me want to slide into the attitude of a dog eagerly waiting and hoping for the least crumb from its master’s table. I try to shake myself out of this by taking the superior position that well, obviously he hasn’t learned the lesson of the old Girl Scout song:

"Make new friends
But keep the old;
One is silver
And the other, gold."

But in the general frame of mind I brought with me its very hard to maintain that. I keep thinking it’s me, something I’ve done to offend him, and I feel myself craving his notice and approval to reassure me I’m acceptable and forgiven.

It sounds as if I’ve got this all analysed out and intellectually settled, but I haven’t at all. Somehow his present caddish behavior is throwing the memory of what a dear, caring person he can be into bright and high relief, making me want to flee to that Lukas* for comfort and warmth and security-- but instead I find only this cold, heedless, aloof reality, and my sense of loss is doubled. If only he would--! I am tempted to think, and the responding "Never!" falls into the deep pit of all the other "nevers" in my limited life, a pit that threatens to swallow me up with them.

Hope of some vague, unfocussed sort does insist on rearing its head, however. Both last Saturday walking along the Backs behind Nigel's* old college of Clare and now here in this wild weather I am nudged to recall the Robert Browning poem, "Never the Time and the Place." I wonder if the abbey library has a copy of it. God, it would be wonderful if I could be sure that

This path so soft to pace shall lead
Through the magic of May to [him]self indeed!

But how and with whom, I haven’t the least idea.

But now it was time for the Easter vigil service. I can’t say I really like this night-before celebration business, it seems a bit previous to me. I suppose I need the sense of anticipation brought about by sleeping on the thing, both at Christmas and Easter. Anyway, here it was.

The service had more drama and no preaching and little if any Scripture reading, again. I guess they assume everyone here knows the Easter story, because a lot of it was pantomime, in the American sense, and not all that well done.

I was somewhat taken aback when in a Scripture quotation used as part of a litany the Holy Spirit was referred to as "she." I’d be awfully interested in knowing what the exegetical basis of that is. But at the moment I shall assume it is merely a fashionable affectation and like disco and polyester leisure suits will eventually blow over. There’s nothing I can do about it here and now and besides, it is only a ripple in the great pond of my isolation here . . . isolation caused not so much by evident doctrinal disagreement with most people here as by, apparently, some fatal flaw in myself. I seem to be losing all ability to make and keep contact with others, and Lukas* and his avoidance of me is a glaring, blaring symbol of my alienation. If he will not come forward and accept me as a human being and a friend, how can I ever expect anyone else to?

Well, a little early (11:55 PM) but close enough the service got to the point where the Lord could be officially declared to be Risen and the abbey bells tolled and tolled. A great continuing chant of "Alleluia" arose and the church was gradually relit, the candle flame being passed from one person to another. The ornaments were brought back as the black draperies were stripped away.

And last of all, as I’d expected, dear Lukas* himself grandly bore the silver cross back to the altar and placed it there as offstage (appropriate term) cymbals clashed and the altar spots came back on for the first time since Thursday night. And I, neither wanting to succumb utterly to my misery nor to allow myself to feel too proud of him, despite his actions toward me, dragged a bit of grim, cynical humor out of it all, thinking, "Well, his mother obviously gave him a good Swiss upbringing-- he puts things back where he found them."

But it didn’t help a great deal, as the last of the printed songs and responses were sung and the piano banged into "Lord of the Dance" and he and the other people in the worship group began to dance in the aisles. If it’d happened at my home church I would’ve said, "Great!" But here, even though I was singing along with the choruses I was growing more and more distant from it all. If Christ is risen, he is not risen in me, not tonight. Not yet.

My candle blew out at the cloister door, and with it the last of my own warmth and light. Out in the cloister people were grabbing one another in great hugs and crying, "Happy Easter!" If the greeting had been, "He is Risen!" answered by "He is Risen Indeed!" I could have coped with that. That is a statement of fact. But "happy"? That is an emotional state that has nothing to do with me.

The wind and rain were still howling, otherwise I would’ve gone straight back to the Center. But as it was, the prudent thing was to head back to the tea table in the abbey seminar room and wait for the weather to die down.

I was making my way through the crowd in the cloister, not far from where Lukas*, with a very unSwiss lack of reserve, was hugging everyone in sight. Goodie for him. And all of a sudden he was there before me and was enfolding me in his arms, exclaiming, "Happy Easter, Blogwen!" and I-- God help me, I held him tightly as if by the mute pressure of my hands upon his back I could tell him how much I needed him to acknowledge and accept me as a human being and a friend. And then I grew frightened, because if I continued I might not be willing to let him go. So I held him apart from me and asked, "How is it going with you?" meaning this week at the abbey, meaning last week in Liverpool, meaning he himself (when he is himself). He took the first meaning only and politely said, "Oh, the week’s been great. How do you like it?"

"It’s all right," I said noncommittally, knowing my attempt to break through had failed. He released me completely then and turned his attention to others, while I made my way through the painfully joyous crowd, feeling so estranged and alienated but far too present as well. I couldn’t even find any of the people from the Center program. I could no more wade in and embrace those people than if I’d been made of stone.

I am bullheaded in my way, though. I hung about in the cloister passage till Lukas* made his way out of the celebratory embraces and tried again to engage him in conversation. I tried humor, since my emotions had to be kept down at all costs. "I see your mother trained you well. You put things back where you find them."

"It is not a matter of training. It’s a matter of spirituality."

Oh, shit. Does he always have to be so blasted literal? Yes, I realise now it was bad taste to make a joke about something that happened in the service. Just because I was feeling out of it doesn’t mean he was. But he never can tell when I’m joking, and I don’t think it’s the language barrier, I think it’s his lack of imagination. It’s not me. I made another joke in front of one of the Englishmen a little later in the tea room and he got it and laughed immediately.

Hung around in the tea room reading the paper, playing with building blocks, and making polite conversation till 2:30 DST. Lukas* was back to being Mr. Aloof again and I was trying not to give a damn.

Then I and a few others made our way back to the Center. I revised the poem I wrote yesterday . . . Then was in the process of crying myself to sleep with the aid of Schubert Lieder when Karen* roused and informed me the music was leaking out around the headphones and could I please turn it off?

Sure. Right. Whatever you say.