Well....why I keep taking photos of kirkyards is really not about being obsessed with death, but because I genuinely like kirkyards. I don't really find them creepy, although some are, I just find them....interesting. They are usually in places where there has been a lot of action.....sometimes since forever. Forever in the human occupation sense, so that's since like neolithic, or sometimes mesolithic times. In my book, that counts as forever. The oldest kirkyards are circular with a kirk in the middle. These were probably holy places way before Christianity, and the people just liked the Gospel and changed over. The conversion here was a peaceful one. So, R and I went to a few (very few) of our favourite haunts today. Tried again to get some video! The audio and video just get stupid somehow! Let me try to bore you anyway! This trip, in many ways, has me thinking of the precarious knife-edge of life. We glide along quite happily looking at views to either side...oblivious to how precious it is. My past is evident here...the major beats of my life involve Scotland. So much has changed and yet so little has changed. I suppose this sense is magnified because it's been a year and a half since I've been back, Coll has basically gone from being a little guy to being an adult in that space of time...I have friends on both side of the "pond" who are fighting scary stuff....quite successfully, but it's still scary, and this makes me stop on the knife-edge and remember we're on a knife-edge. It just makes me really appreciate the ride we're on....and the people with whom I'm riding. How stuff twenty or so years ago has made me who I am...and how stuff now will form the us twenty years on....happy...sad....all the in between. It's just good to recognize it every now and again. I write this now at FUNWORLD Indoor Playland in Greenock...(in all honesty "Fun" world is not the name I would call it) surrounded by tutu-ed, be-pinked, three year old girls and wild, wild, freckled boys who shout! Quite a lot! I suffer for Caoir's "Scottish" birthday celebration. He is a child who kens how to work the cross-cultural span to his advantage. It's a week and a bit 'til his birthday! After this, we head home to stuff them full of sausage rolls, pizza, ice cream and cake....watch the World Cup (go France!) and then on to a concert of Metrical Psalms by the FreeKirk! So, my day has gone from mountain-top to the blinking depths of Hell, back up to mountain-top! Just kidding! FunWorld isn't that bad....it's more like....purgatory! I just got beaned in the head with a ball from the ball-pit! Toddlers!
No comments:
Post a Comment