Arrival

Andrea Blumberg

28. Arrival in Edinburgh (Mar '08)

I've been in Edinburgh for just over a week now; my body clock has grudgingly accepted that the sun now comes up four hours earlier than expected; my subconscious is learning to look the opposite way for oncoming traffic; and my "sense of here" and "sense of there" are trading places, like the water and the colored oil in those desktop toys that you flip upside down to watch them burble.

It's an appropriate metaphor, actually, as re-settling of life doesn't all happen at once, nor does it happen in any predictable way. It's a series of little spurts and bubbles, chaotically shouldering past each other in an attempt to restore some sense of order. At first everything is up for grabs: no place to call home, no regular schedule, all my belongings in a little bundle that I wheel along behind me. Then one coloured blob reaches the top; I arrive at my friend Matt's flat on the south side of Edinburgh, and I can take off my shoes, let the clothes spill out over the sides of the suitcase, and put a pin in the map from which distances and directions can be measured.

Several more tiny blobs float up as I search for a more permanent place to live. Phoning a few different people, going to see a few different flats, and then deciding to take the room in the flat owned by my friends with the puppet theatre company. It's a bit outside of the middle of things (a 15 minute bus ride to the north east side of town) but the neighborhood has all the important amenities (supermarket, library, gym, the Royal Yacht Britannia at the nearby docks on the Firth of Forth, and plenty of regular busses into the city centre). Their flat is directly above their studio space, so while I was visiting I helped them to build the puppet show they're going to open next Monday; painting sets, sewing props, etc. It's auspicious, that I can have a creative outlet in the same building in which I'm going to be living....

And the serendipitous merging of blobs continues: A friend recently made me aware of a treasure hunting company just like the one I did some part-time work for in Philly (not a company which scours beaches with metal detectors, or descends on estate sales with a copy of How to Distinguish Antique Chippendale Chairs from Ikea Production Runs, but one which organizes team-building treasure hunts for corporations, or for random groups of the general public). It turns out the UK one has just opened an Edinburgh branch but doesn't have anyone local to run it (they were planning on flying up from London when they needed to). I spoke with the guy who runs the company (Wild Goose Treasure Hunts -- http://www.huntthegoose.co.uk) and I'm going to help out with one of their hunts in York in mid-April, and if they like me, they'll hire me to run the hunts in Scotland and the north of England. A part time job that will hopefully mesh well with the music gigs that I will hopefully get.

And finally, I've been re-merging with friends whom I haven't seen since I left in August. I've met one or two for lunch, and even got whisked along to a dance on Friday night (that set my jet-lag accommodation back a couple days, as I stayed up late, engaging in fluid dynamics of the dancing sort).

Things will get shaken up a bit again, starting tomorrow. I'll leave Matt's flat, and go to the Edinburgh International Harp Festival for a week (http://www.harpfestival.co.uk/). I'll be doing administrative-y and stage-hand-y things, helping to run the concerts and make sure the classes go smoothly, and in between catch up with all the people whom I haven't seen since the last harp festival. I'll be staying on the campus of the boys' school in which the festival takes place, so that's easy, but then after that I'm rootless, subject to Brownian motion, until I get to move into the puppet flat on the 14th. I'll probably go up and visit my friends on the Isle of Lewis for a bit, and spend some more time with my friends from Perth. And try to encourage some more of the gainful-employment bubbles to reach the surface.

I've considered that perhaps the reason why I turn my life upside-down every year or so is that I delight in the process of chaos-becoming-homogeneity. All homogeneity gets boring, and all chaos is too much for me, but I'm really enjoying this particular phase, as the unknown becomes known, the old meshes with the new, the potential becomes actual, and the oil and the water get to mix, if only briefly.

Love,
Andrea