I have an excuse!

I was all ready to write entries the last three days, but I've been without internet. So here, you get them all in one blog. 

DAY SIXTY-TWO:
I took a tour of Loch Lomond, the Highlands, and Stirling Castle. I listened to music as we sailed through the Scottish hinterlands, and it was gorgeous. Here, of course, are some pictures.

I was struck by the actual story behind You Take the High Road, and we listened to it on the bus on the way to Loch Lomond. It was beautiful, the whole day, and I'm so glad I did the trip. 

I came home, grumbled about not being able to do the vault tour because of my leg, and then went to the pub to write instead. Most of it came out scribbles, but here's a picture of the writing space.

DAY SIXTY-FOUR:
I went home. 

I got up at 4 in the morning, took a cab, got through security, and then I was on a plane for eleven hours. 

Eleven hours, because one for boarding, two because the engine literally blew right before we took off and we had to fix it ... or, they had to fix it, I didn't, and then the rest for flight and waiting on the runway in Chicago, because our plane lost power right after we landed. 

So yes, that happened.

I sped through security, got through customs, and ran onto my flight home right as the gate was closing. 

I think they were trying to give my seat up to a standby. Not bloody likely. 

On the plane ride home, all I wanted to do was get to my apartment and see my husband. It had been a great trip, but I have never wanted to simply sit on a couch in the middle of my Shire for so long, and I knew that feeling would quickly rub away, so I enjoyed it as long as I had it. 

I also read the entirety of Go Set a Watchman.

Seeing as in real life, I am Scout (minus her awkward and disturbing views of the black community), I really enjoyed the book for what it was: a first draft. I think that's what I took away from the book. You can still turn out a great writer when you have a crappy draft. 

I landed. My parents picked me up. They immediately started updating me on what has happened the last month, from family gossip to national news. I suddenly felt very overwhelmed, and I thought back to Bilbo coming back to his Shire. 

Nothing ever looks the same when you've seen the larger picture. 

"You change change the world and expect it to remain the same."

I collapsed in my parents' living room, waiting for Alex to collect me. He did, eventually, and we jetlag-ate a pizza before going to bed. 

I don't have coherent words for the trip yet, but I do know that I'm a stronger writer because of it. It allowed me to gain confidence, meet amazing people, and understand the scope of the universe (although it is so much bigger than what I saw). It's been humbling, gratifying, imaginative, and amazing. 

Now onto the writing session for today.

The last two days have been two of the most beautiful days of my life. 

I thought I was going to have enough to write about with what happened yesterday, but then bam, today came. 

Yesterday, I went on a tour of Western UK, and I saw Stonehenge, Windsor, and Bath. Bath is significant for me, because it is where I was supposed to go to school for my creative writing MFA. There in Bath is some kind of weird alter-world where I decided to screw my cancer scare, screw the debt I would have been in, and gone for the degree in England. I really wanted Bath to be ugly. Unfortunately, it looked like this:

So there was that.

I was sad. I hurried through the Roman Baths so I could walk around the town and think about how my life would have been different. 

I thought about the people I've met since September of 2013. I thought about all the plays I did, all the stories I'd written, all the people who had died, all the funerals I'd been to, and of course the Disney trips with Alex. I thought about Alex. I thought about my friends, my family. I thought about how I'd grown, how much I loved Stonecoast. 

And somewhere in the middle of all this, I realized that when I would have returned to the states with a PhD next spring, both of my grandmothers would have died, my friend would have died. And then as I sat in the square, texting my friend about how sad I was that I hadn't lived here, I said, "What do you think would have happened if I'd gone?"

"Well," they said. "I probably wouldn't be here anymore."

Turns out, not to my knowledge, that because I was in the states, this friend hadn't been alone. This friend had someone when they needed someone. And this friend would be dead. Like really really dead. They were certain of this. And it shook me up the rest of the day. 

If I had lived here, this person would be dead. 

And somewhere around driving along some old village with a bell tower outside of Stonehenge, I started writing furiously. I didn't write on either of my projects. It was a completely new idea. It culminated all these pictures I'd been taking, the conversation through text I'd just had, my new love for this country, and the connection to the past that we get through travel. 

As of this afternoon, I have twenty raw pages of the new project, with my friend's gracious blessing. 

That leads us into today. I wrote most of those pages on the train from London to Edinburgh. It was not as magical as I'd hoped, since we had to pass the exact spot where Rowling has said Platform 9 3/4ths is (hint: it's not between 9 and 10, and it's also not the commercial gift shop faux platform spot). And Rowling came up with the idea for Harry on a train heading to Edinburgh. So I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I sometimes looked out the window, but I was cramped and tired and after four hours, we arrived in Edinburgh.

I am staying at the childhood home of Kenneth Grahame. This is the sign in the corridor to explain that this is a nationally historic house and no, the bed and breakfast cannot put an elevator in:

Sometimes things just work out. 

This is a part of what I wrote today, for AAE:


"Although I won't be here forever, I am here now. This is my one inch of the world, even if it's only mine long enough to write this page. You have given this to me, and it's enough."


Last night was Alex's last night before going back to the states. Instead of hanging out in our airport hotel, we took the expensive and long trek into London and saw Everyman at the National. It was worth it. 

Afterwards, we stumbled out onto the balcony, then down to the riverfront, where we saw plastic rainbow walkways, double decker busses full of ice cream, and one alleyway with a long line leading into a warped circus behind a brick wall. 

We fell in love with the river. We fell in love with the city. It was so good to be back in London after Paris. 

This morning, Alex left, and I wanted to go with him. But I know myself, just as he knows me, and I bawled my way through packing, through saying goodbye, through doing my homework, through checking out, and then I hit the train. 

"Today," I said to myself," I am a Londoner. I have a whole day to do whatever the hell I want. I have an overloaded Oyster card. Let's do this."

It helped that Alex had told me to go have fun. He didn't want me to go home. He wanted me to do all the things he knew I'd have fun doing. 

"You have to ride the Rowling train," he said, "have some of her dust rub off on you. Make sure you write on the way to Scotland!"

And I realized just how special he is. 

I mean, of course I already knew how special he was. But how many people have husbands who say such things to them? I am lucky. I know I am lucky. 

So the day was spent walking around. I hung out with an old dear friend in Russell Park. I went to Westminster Abbey on a whim, and got shuffled into a real service in the heart of the cathedral, choirs and standing and kneeling and all. 

("What church is this?" some American tourist asked one of the officiants. "Catholic?" 
The officiant just stared at him. "Anglican, sir."
"Why's that?")

There was a moment in Westminster, where I was thinking about all of the coronations, all of the weddings ... how scared Diana must have been, how excited and prepped Kate felt ... how King George once shouted out for everyone to hear ... that the choir started singing, and I had this straight-on view of the stained glass, and I felt at home. I was a quarter of a world away from my real apartment, my real life, my husband, my family ... but there was someone there for me, something peaceful in the service. 

I'm not one for churches, but cathedrals, man. 

I went outside, and there was a woman who grabbed me and said, "Are you from here?"

Before I could answer, she decided I was in fact from here, and she said, "Where's the Palace? Buckingham?"

I actually did point her in the right direction.

This happened another time. And then another. 

I got groceries, came home to my temporary apartment, and found that there was a secret garden outside my window. I took pictures. I wrote. I was just happy, and I haven't been happy in a long time. 

For those of you who don't know, part of the reason why the year of writing challenge is a thing, is because for the last five years, I've gone through rough waters. I honestly didn't think I was going to get anymore days like this. And at one point, somewhere in the middle of the Louvre, I said to Alex in tears, "Now that I'm here in Paris, it sucks. Maybe nothing lives up to what it is in your head."

But then Alex said it was okay to be disappointed. Alex said we would find something pretty in the city. Alex said it was going to be okay. 

And then we came back to London. 

So today was a good day. I wrote a lot of ideas down, a stupid little poem, and I'm sure today will come out in writing at some point in the future. 

There still are secret gardens behind buildings, circuses in alleyways, true love and kindness in men. There still is magic. 

I board the Hogwarts Express in two days and take the same trek Rowling did when she came up with the idea for her book.

This is our last night in Paris. 

It's been a weird four days. We started off, terrified of everything, thinking someone would murder us if we didn't speak French, and then we slipped into understanding the flow of the streets, appreciating the once-scary neighborhood we'd taken up a hotel in, and suddenly I find myself a little sad we're leaving tomorrow.

I will not miss the queues at some of the biggest over-hyped monuments this side of the meridian. I will definitely not miss the obnoxious masses of people at those sites. I won't miss the "One Euro! One Euro!" peddlers, because there are only so many ways you can tell someone you don't want a cartoon drawing of yourself nor do you want five plastic Eiffel Towers for the price of one. 

I will miss the cute cinema we went to tonight. I will miss this small hotel room that we first hated (four days?!) and now have grown to call a temporary home. We opened up the windows and suddenly, our small closet turns into a hammock in the canopy of some of the coolest architecture I've seen. 

I now know what it feels like to be an outsider. But I also know that the two of us can step off a train, be terrified out of our wits, and in less than a week, conduct ourselves through a three-course meal at a fancy restaurant. We did it. 

Now about the writing portion: I got about two paragraphs written during my time here in Paris. We were running around all over the damn place, but seeing Hugo's Notre Dame and James Joyce's Shakespeare and Company, I feel as if my writing education continued nonetheless. Walking around the streets where F. Scott and Zelda strolled, seeing how much there was for Hugo to save in an old condemned church ... it makes things mean a little more, make a little more sense. 

I think this is where Paris's heart really lies. I don't think it's in the Eiffel Tower. I don't think it's in Versailles queues or weird river boat cruises. I think it's in the quiet spots on a sidewalk after the sun goes down. It's in the way two young idiots have to clasp each other's hands and say to the other, "We're in this together." That's what Paris will be for me. 

Now back to London.