8.13.2006

Ay... Goot marnin froom Scoatlen


Well the jetlag has got me totally screwed up at this point. Its about 6 in the morning now and i finally decided enough staring at the ceiling and so here i am. Bleary eyed and blogging. Really worth the price of sleep to see this out the window of the flat i am staying in. That is Bass Rock. You can't see the color here but that is a huge white rock off the coast of North Berwick, on the East Lothian Coast of Scotland, in the Firth of Forth. It is covered, and i mean covered, with birds. Hence the whiteness... At one point in its career as a big rock, it hosted a prison that hosted prisoners that i gaurantee you were, towards the end of their life, deathly scared of anything that flies.


Just over to the left of Bass Rock is Fidra Island. Also now a preserve for birds, Fidra comes from the Scottish word "feathery". Feathery is also the word for the first golf balls, which were to peices of leather sewn together and stuffed with a top hat full of feathers. Took two days to make. i have held one, they are like rocks. Because golf as we know it was born on that coastline you see just next to the island, i have been playing with a theory in my theorymaker that the ballmakers would take a small boat over to the island covered with birds(which i did once, also influencing my theory, and making me deathly scared of seaguls... whole other story) to get their feathers... thus the name "feathery". I think it's a swell theory...

Somewhere during all that, Fidra was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. He stood on that beach as a child and making up an entire mythology, one day becoming old enough to take the very small journey over to its rocky shore. Like the story, a boy moving into the world of men.

Fidra was also home to a monastery at one point, long long ago... which is where the old saying came from, "some rocks hold monks, some hold prisoners, seaguls shit on both." You can look it up.

Now global warming is even having a drastic effect on the life inhabiting this small island. The ground is becoming to warm and firm for a certain plant to grow, which the birds used to feed on... and so it goes.

(PS. I'd just like to say that i didn't Google any of that. Just chalk it up as years of research about a friggin rock)

2 comments:

highlowbetween said...

A true Lord of letters!

mindsprinter said...

How did you get through security with all your glorious photo equipment?