Scotland, brave

Scotland has been difficult for me on many levels.

No lie: I was expecting a bit more. We have preconceived notions about the land and what it will show us, as well as thoughts about the weather and the people and everything that makes the land so unique. Hold the bagpipes and the haggis.

I have learned a lot, but not in ways that I was expecting. I have learned about myself and my thought processes, how I behave and approach and where my boundaries lie. I have not necessarily learned to master these obstacles, but I am now aware of where these obstacles sit on my map. I thought I had some idea of what and where these were, but the environment here, isolation from everything familiar and being on a quick schedule has been immensely... useful.

It is strange to say, but I feel as though I have outgrown myself this week. To explain, consider how much a person can change over the course of a year. Though arbitrary, a year can provide the opportunity to transmute from night to day. This is a fairly optimistic analogy. The person I was comparing myself to one year ago came from a clean background, no habits and no knowledge. The person I am today is... not. You cannot expect yourself to be the person you once were, no matter how much easier and more pleasant the notion would be.

On Mull the roads remind me of the French story, The Little Prince. They are, to some, asphalt and sometimes unpaved dirt roads with pulloffs and expanses of single lane. To me, the stretches are snakes that have swallowed the fluffy fat sheep that stray off the rolling green hillsides. The mountains are stolid ancients, the trees their prickly fingers. While the land to me is a hard, masculine embodiment of the wild earth, the sky is a gentle, feminine eye with fickle emotions and shaded expressions. Perhaps this was just for us. The weather was impeccably dry: mild, dramatic only during brief snatches when we were turned the other way.

The town of Tobermory is so beautiful and quaint, complete with idyllic little boats and a perfect half moon harbor and an unpredictable tide. I have so many memories from this town, many of them good and some of them bad, but it was a shockingly colorful reality for this week. I will never look at Tobermory as a tourist because I was there on serious business. I looked inside myself and was not entirely pleased with what I saw, or what this town taught me about who I am. But miraculously I found the strength to push through and that is the most important lesson I have learned.

For first three days I wanted to throw something against the wall. I was blocked with a terrible emotional numbness that left me barren and cold. For days I wanted to scream, hit, and most of all rake my hands through my flesh and inject life and creativity through my soul. Like tilling hard soil and enriching the smothered earth with light and air, something inside me was thirsting for the land's vitality to grow something new. I lacked that One Thing, whatever it is that distills the world around us into Art. And it hurt so deeply and so profoundly. I found myself beginning to resent and to hate.

I would look around me with shrouded eyes, see the wind tossing the grasses and the trees, breathe the briny air and hear the childish cry of lambs. And it was dead to me. I would stride in the opposite direction of my friends seeking knowledge and my lost hope, run fast across the peaty bogs and throw my backpack on the ground. I would sit on the stones and hop across the waters, waiting patiently for something. Anything. I waited for tears, for anger, for understanding and none of it would come. For three days my hands shook, my eyes stayed dry, and I felt betrayed by my camera, mind, and body.

I only know how to work one way, and that is alone. Regretful, since I enjoy the company of these people very much and wanted to be able to get to know them as real people. But priorities lie as they lie and I made my choice. I would sacrifice these good people to chase the art. Would I succeed? Was it worth it?

In the end I succumbed and became more at peace with the flow of my thoughts. I am not sure what the trigger was or how it happened. Perhaps it was Marc and his honest wisdom, a breaking point with my internal pain, or maybe it was just enough time to settle and get used to so much change.

Nonetheless, I will always remember Scotland. It was not as rough, ragged and beautiful to me as Ireland, nor was it perfect and peaceful and warm as central Europe. My experiences here will, however, always be colored with a certain amount of frustration, education, self-knowledge and in some ways, despair. Each tile of my mosaic has been painted and once I return home, step back and view them with clearer eyes perhaps I will not be too displeased with the image that I see.

A Long Winter, Season's End

Baltimore's farmer's market is a seasonal entity spanning the warmer half of the year and the lower part of the city. From May until December locals haul their wares underneath the I-83 overpass on Saratoga Street, in the shadow of the downtown skyscrapers and nestled against the eclectic Hollywood Diner. No one will actually mention it, but it is also within a stone's throw of the historic "Metropolitan Transition Center" (prison) on Madison, that huge gray stone building that looks like a castle. I have not been to the market in several years and was long overdue a visit.

Waking up and getting downtown by 8 AM is routine, even on a Sunday. At dawn the skies were gray with mist, unusual weather for May in Maryland, and the sun was a pale white disk behind temperamental tendrils of cloud. Within the hour it was clear and blue, leaving only a more ambiguous film at our level. I couldn't help but think of a sleepy Sunday morning in downtown San Francisco, shortly before our graffiti escapade half a year ago. Fog is not a common occurrence in Baltimore and is probably been caused by the cooler, moister weather that we have been experiencing lately. This rare haze lent an otherworldly feel to the events that were to follow.

At 8:25 the market was hopping. The first market of the year! It is surely a day to celebrate. The smells of barbecue and bread, automotive fumes and the occasional waft of incense was as clamorous on the nose as the sounds were to the ears. Peeking between the huge steel joists of the overpass was the shy slanted sunlight, making golden liquid pools in the cold shadows. I was taken by the colors and motion, the halos of light illuminating hair of all textures and colors and shapes as people milled around. Jars of sweet amber honey, forbidden cans of homemade salsas and chutney, tiny promising pots of fresh baby herbs and baskets and bins of fruit. Like any other farm market we kept our eyes open for fresh vegetables, anything that came from the green fields of our state rather than struggling warmer countries across the world. There were also crusty brown loaves of bread baked fresh, dusted with flour and inviting to the teeth. Sticky cinnamon buns, innocent-looking muffins, salty kettle-popped popcorn, even wheat grass smoothies and the longest line for coffee I had ever seen in Baltimore. Between the farmers' stands and handwritten signs were steaming buffet trays of Caribbean samosas, home cured bacon, crisp fried fish (you can't be in Baltimore without fried fish), made-to-order omelettes. Closest to the street was a short alley of art vendors: batik clothing, wood carvings and jewelry. The variety in goods was mirrored by the variety of people brought here together for the day.

I could see pieces of scruffy urban life minging freely with the nouveau hippie, sharing the common goal of supporting the communal sale. Neon Trader Joe's bags under so many elbows slanging together with hemp and cloth and plastic and in one case even a little red wagon! Punk hipster hair here, curly grey there, highlights yonder. Hawkers, pokers, sniffers, testers, waiters, servers, shoppers, takers... everyone became one between the muraled pillars and the intermittent growwwwl thump! of trucks overhead. Friends shared fruit and pastries sitting together and laughing against parking meters. Children ran underfoot and oogled at the bounty of the fields. Old women with armloads of petunias magisterially cleared swaths through the crowd with only floppy pink blooms.

Patiently, Alex Brown, Legg Mason, the Shot Tower and Baltimore Trust waited, holding the mist at bay for a few more hours. Across the way at club Sonar, a sleepy-looking bouncer in a pinstripe hat looked completely out of place in the morning sun. We toted our goods to the car, knowing we would be fed for a few days at least. I wondered idly if the dragon roar of the overpass had been infused into the crunch of my lettuce. As I enjoy my salad in my kitchen at home, would I taste the thunderous shake overhead and the explosive vibrance of the urban market? I regrettably did not bring my camera this morning because I was not expecting to be so pleased with the experience. Sure, there were no giant ruby strawberries, chilled sweet apple cider, juicy dates or ten varieties of fresh oranges at every corner but Baltimore has shown that it has much of its own matchless identity in these weekly bazaars. Nothing can take the true Charm City foibles out of the streets or the people, no matter how hard you try. But for what reason would you want?