4:19 p.m. 12 September 2002
I’m back at work. No, for once, the absence of journal entries doesn’t just signify my not writing: I went to Wales the past three days!
My aunt and uncle and cousin all arrived in England Friday in order to move Annie (cousin) back in to her flat in preparation for her second year at veterinary school here, and they spur of the moment invited me to Wales Sunday through Wednesday. And so I went. (No Wales = work + hours of Tube time. Yes Wales = no work + pretty scenery. Choice was clear.)
And Wales was lovely. We saw: Tinturn Abbey, St. David’s and White Sands Bay (on the northwest coast), several pretty waterfalls in Brecon Beacons National Park, and Pen Y Fal (highest mountain in Wales). Oh, and castles. Several castles. Annie was sort of on a castle-bagging mission, so Monday we did this kind of speed castle-tour, where we would drive an hour and a half to a castle, jump out, get stung by nettles while Annie took a picture, and get back in the car. We did not see the insides of any of these castles. To be fair, though, the nettles was only once, and I was the only one who got stung. Advice from castle observation: if you’re going to build a castle, put a really good roof on. The castles were really cool, in the ruined-things kind of way.
Tintern Abbey is really cool in that way too ?but it’s spiritual. I think I may have more understanding for the Romantics now, though I don’t know that I’ll ever really like the Wordsworth poem. Walking in there late in the afternoon Sunday, weary and kind of numbed from the drive and existential worries, seeing the setting sun fall quietly on the ruined stone and green grass inside, the birds flying quietly from cold wall to cold wall far above, the quiet, shadowed towers of a worship centuries sleeping. I stood for a very long time just looking up from the doorway to the main church, imagining first the cold, austere monks hundreds of years ago, disappearing into darkness, singing praises to a hard and distant God, a God who lived in towering stone and purity, then the Romantics, dazed and weary themselves in a world that was falling down about their ears, just as the monks world had now fallen, a nature that was disappearing like the sunlight, but seemed suddenly strange and far away, like the countryside around the Abbey. It must have seemed, I think, to those poets of a brand new age of revolution, industrial and political, like a way to understand the God in nature and in man ?to see how they might interlace, the pain and beauty of living, in this quiet, ruined thing. Tinturn Abbey seems almost part of the mountains, a piece of nature as much as humanity is a piece of nature. The cries to God are quiet here, but old, and the echoes of worship in the hills and the grey stone are the same.
Monday was the day for the coast, and while St. David’s, where we had tea with some very loud children, was nice, the best part was when we actually went down to the ocean, at White Sands Bay. I am sure there were seals out there, even though Annie was skeptical. This was probably my favorite thing we saw the whole trip. But I don’t know what I can say about it. I longed to jump from the cliff I had all to myself for a while into the cold, dark water and swim away into the setting sunlight towards the faint islands just off the coast, dark as a seal. One understands how St. Patrick might have visions there. Though my visions would not be of St. Patrick’s type.
Tuesday was the day for hiking. First we went to waterfalls, which were very pretty. I fell down in the mud four times, though, as it had rained much of Monday and was quite wet, and my shoes didn’t have a lot of traction. But that was okay.
Then we went up to Pen y Fal, which was my second favorite part of the trip. We ended up hiking about three hours, combined, there, and it was wonderful. It’s quite steep up, but once you’re up on these two peaks, Corn Du and Pen y Fal (which is only 13 feet higher than the other, but that’s enough to make it the tallest), the things you can see are breathtaking. The land there is not so wild as in Yorkshire, but it has some of the same feel: the abruptly shadowed and lighted mountains rolling away into the distance, the tiny, icy lake tucked at the foot of a mountain, the rocks rising suddenly out of the land. If you’ve read the dark is rising, think “on the day of the dead / when the year too dies / by the door of the birds / where the breeze breaks by the pleasant lake / where the sleepers lie / shall the youngest open the oldest hills / and the silver eyes that see the wind / and the light shall have the harp of gold.) There were two cairns on those mountains, both touched by the setting sun. (yes. All three of the most important things I did there were at sunset.)
Those cairns are where I spent my time thinking about September 11th. It is a very old place for mourning, and it is good to mourn for all of the dead there. From that place I looked out; and I remembered them.
Yit-gadal v'yit-kadash shemei raba b'alma di vera chir'utei v'yamlikh mal-chutei b'chayei-chon uv'yomei-chon uv'chayei di-chol beit yisrael ba-agala u-vizman kariv. V'imru Amen.
Zekher tzadik livrakhah.
May all those who mourn have the peace of the oldest hills; may all have remembrance in the light of the setting sun.
I’m back at work. No, for once, the absence of journal entries doesn’t just signify my not writing: I went to Wales the past three days!
My aunt and uncle and cousin all arrived in England Friday in order to move Annie (cousin) back in to her flat in preparation for her second year at veterinary school here, and they spur of the moment invited me to Wales Sunday through Wednesday. And so I went. (No Wales = work + hours of Tube time. Yes Wales = no work + pretty scenery. Choice was clear.)
And Wales was lovely. We saw: Tinturn Abbey, St. David’s and White Sands Bay (on the northwest coast), several pretty waterfalls in Brecon Beacons National Park, and Pen Y Fal (highest mountain in Wales). Oh, and castles. Several castles. Annie was sort of on a castle-bagging mission, so Monday we did this kind of speed castle-tour, where we would drive an hour and a half to a castle, jump out, get stung by nettles while Annie took a picture, and get back in the car. We did not see the insides of any of these castles. To be fair, though, the nettles was only once, and I was the only one who got stung. Advice from castle observation: if you’re going to build a castle, put a really good roof on. The castles were really cool, in the ruined-things kind of way.
Tintern Abbey is really cool in that way too ?but it’s spiritual. I think I may have more understanding for the Romantics now, though I don’t know that I’ll ever really like the Wordsworth poem. Walking in there late in the afternoon Sunday, weary and kind of numbed from the drive and existential worries, seeing the setting sun fall quietly on the ruined stone and green grass inside, the birds flying quietly from cold wall to cold wall far above, the quiet, shadowed towers of a worship centuries sleeping. I stood for a very long time just looking up from the doorway to the main church, imagining first the cold, austere monks hundreds of years ago, disappearing into darkness, singing praises to a hard and distant God, a God who lived in towering stone and purity, then the Romantics, dazed and weary themselves in a world that was falling down about their ears, just as the monks world had now fallen, a nature that was disappearing like the sunlight, but seemed suddenly strange and far away, like the countryside around the Abbey. It must have seemed, I think, to those poets of a brand new age of revolution, industrial and political, like a way to understand the God in nature and in man ?to see how they might interlace, the pain and beauty of living, in this quiet, ruined thing. Tinturn Abbey seems almost part of the mountains, a piece of nature as much as humanity is a piece of nature. The cries to God are quiet here, but old, and the echoes of worship in the hills and the grey stone are the same.
Monday was the day for the coast, and while St. David’s, where we had tea with some very loud children, was nice, the best part was when we actually went down to the ocean, at White Sands Bay. I am sure there were seals out there, even though Annie was skeptical. This was probably my favorite thing we saw the whole trip. But I don’t know what I can say about it. I longed to jump from the cliff I had all to myself for a while into the cold, dark water and swim away into the setting sunlight towards the faint islands just off the coast, dark as a seal. One understands how St. Patrick might have visions there. Though my visions would not be of St. Patrick’s type.
Tuesday was the day for hiking. First we went to waterfalls, which were very pretty. I fell down in the mud four times, though, as it had rained much of Monday and was quite wet, and my shoes didn’t have a lot of traction. But that was okay.
Then we went up to Pen y Fal, which was my second favorite part of the trip. We ended up hiking about three hours, combined, there, and it was wonderful. It’s quite steep up, but once you’re up on these two peaks, Corn Du and Pen y Fal (which is only 13 feet higher than the other, but that’s enough to make it the tallest), the things you can see are breathtaking. The land there is not so wild as in Yorkshire, but it has some of the same feel: the abruptly shadowed and lighted mountains rolling away into the distance, the tiny, icy lake tucked at the foot of a mountain, the rocks rising suddenly out of the land. If you’ve read the dark is rising, think “on the day of the dead / when the year too dies / by the door of the birds / where the breeze breaks by the pleasant lake / where the sleepers lie / shall the youngest open the oldest hills / and the silver eyes that see the wind / and the light shall have the harp of gold.) There were two cairns on those mountains, both touched by the setting sun. (yes. All three of the most important things I did there were at sunset.)
Those cairns are where I spent my time thinking about September 11th. It is a very old place for mourning, and it is good to mourn for all of the dead there. From that place I looked out; and I remembered them.
Yit-gadal v'yit-kadash shemei raba b'alma di vera chir'utei v'yamlikh mal-chutei b'chayei-chon uv'yomei-chon uv'chayei di-chol beit yisrael ba-agala u-vizman kariv. V'imru Amen.
Zekher tzadik livrakhah.
May all those who mourn have the peace of the oldest hills; may all have remembrance in the light of the setting sun.
Labels: death/mourning/corpses, England, friends, liminality, space, trips
pHi,Mt Snowdon is actually the highest mountain in Wales while Pen y fan is the highest in South Wales.