The Pilgrim's Way.

Lindisfarne is known as the Holy Island. It turns out that this place, back in the 7th c., was full of learning and industry and, relatively speaking, wealth. It's where the Lindisfarne Gospels were produced. And the Vikings, those axe-wielding, longboat riding Vikings, busted it all up. It's fairly riveting as medieval religious stories go, since in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it's reported that in 793 when the Vikings struck,

'In this year dire portents appeared over Northumbria and sorely frightened the people. They consisted of immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightening, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine immediately followed those signs and a little after that in the same year, on 8 June, the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter.'

[Side note: among my excellent company today, which included a son-in-law educated in Scotland, a daughter who was an English major, and three Scottish schoolchildren--and the historian!--I was the only one who ever heard of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Frankly, I could not believe this, the people. On the other hand, my granddaughter said under her breath, 'dragons are real.' Thank you, Anglo-Saxon Chronicler!]
Anyway: as my daughter pointed out today, in the past two days, I've had the chance to do two things I have long wanted to do--visit Jupiter Artland, and walk from the mainland across the causeway at low tide to Lindisfarne. And visit the ruined priory, etc.
Yesterday, I was trying to size up the actual length and walking conditions of the walk. I thought I had read that it was about a mile. Piece of cake. But then I read somewhere a length of five miles, which isn't a big deal except that you have to get on and off the island during the hours of low tide, or you're stuck, and while I wanted to have a tiny inkling of that walking the pilgrim's way thing*, I didn't want to do it at the expense of seeing it with my daughter, the historian, my grandchildren. Also, the description of the five miles mentioned mud. And I only brought one pair of shoes on this road trip. (NOTE TO SELF: one pair of shoes is NEVER A GOOD IDEA.)
Last night at dinner, I said to my son-in-law, 'The good news is, I've made up my mind not to worry about the walking. I mean, I would like to do the walk, but I don't want to make a fetish of it, and the more important thing is going to the island.'
Sensibly, he pointed out that we could just check it out when we got there this morning. Of course. Just wait and see. And when we arrived this morning, the weather was beautiful, the length of the walk was clearly just under a mile, and they agreed they'd be glad to drive to the other side while the historian and I walked. Perfect.
So my one pair of shoes and the historian and I walked across the causeway:

and it was glorious.
***
When we got there, we saw this

and also this:

and also this:

Let it be noted in the Chronicles: this was a great day.

(and also: dragons are real.)

*It should be noted: the actual Pilgrim's Way is not the causeway--you have to follow markers, and it's longer, and--it must be said--muddier. Full disclosure: I took the easy way. The one pair of shoes way. Definitely, I did.

Something I made.

I've been trying to make this little story (the link takes you to the site, but I've embedded it below) for awhile, but hadn't found a good tool for it until now. It's not amazing or anything, but I like it. Please excuse my excessive Snapseedery. I was really into it there for quite some time.

(thanks to Justin Jory for pointing me to Exposure.)



What is ruined? by Lisa Bickmore on Exposure

The rubble and the glory.

Today I took on the ruin. But before that I took on my bureau. But before that, I started on the ruin. The true story is, there is a lot of ruin in my house, and it isn't confined to one room.

My study, though, is the big ruin. Let's analyze:

First there was stuff that just needed to be put away. But before it could be put away, the things that were extra and not necessary and perhaps even egregious needed to be sorted. Old magazines? Boxes with artifacts from my youth? Expired discount cards purchased from long-gone high school athletes? All these things and more needed to be sorted and culled and, in my current ruthless mood, thrown ruthlessly away. Then the putting away could commence. Rinse, lather, repeat, if you see what I mean. This has gone on all day.

"Did Bruiser do this?"

The room, however, has sectors, and all the sectors cannot be dealt with at once. For instance, one of my first goals was to make sure that there were no more books on the floor. We are just about, just about there. Maybe we're even actually there. Now, though, there are papers. Not on the floor, per se, but on the level above that: on the footstools and ottomans. These must also be sorted and gone through. Some things must be shredded. Others must be placed into some sort of conceptual domain, or moved into another room, but preferably into a space where they belong and not into some new vortex of randomness.

Pause: is my house my enemy or my friend?

Tonight, I took everything off my desk and threw away a good cubic foot or maybe more of random nonsense. I will say that my desire for an entirely clean surface is not fulfilled. But there's a much larger area of tidy, not cluttered space, so it's an improvement. For the entirely clean surface to result, I would need to have a better filing system.

Question: what is actually in my files?

Also, I would need to have a place to store the ribbon and glitter, true story.

Well, I continue the sorting and organizing. I hope not to lose momentum before I take the books off the shelves and imagine a more logical and evident order, one that will help me lay hold of the book I want when I want it. But this may necessitate reordering books all through the house. This, as you may imagine, seems daunting.

Also, I need to recycle approximately the contents of one file drawer. I even know which drawer it is. There is also a heap of cameras that need a place to live. But where? where?

For the past two days, my back has been a little twinge-y. This happens, sometimes, when I've been sick, because of the dramatic increase in laying around. It's a thrill to see which sector of the back will twinge next. At the moment, it's the area between my shoulder blades.

Cheers to a cleaner desk, and to books off the floor, and to a plan for greater order and more file space and a place for everything and everything in its place. And to the next stop for back twinges to be elsewhere, wherever twinges go to sort themselves out.

photo credit: whistlesinthewind, "moorland ruin 2"

Duration.

I have been thinking about how things last.

Sometimes, things just stick around for a long time. The Romans, for instance, evidently knew how to build, since so many of their inventions and constructions persist through the centuries and millennia.

 

 

But I'm interested by the fact that some of the old places we've visited--medieval castles, Roman ruins and remnants--get picked up piece by piece, stones carried off, used for other things.

 

 

I remember being struck by this, that artists were recyclers, both metaphorically in terms of aesthetic ideas, and literally, in their materials. I saw a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, I think, that had a whole other painting underneath it. These pieces by Andy Goldsworthy, installed in the National Museum of Scotland, use scrap wood salvaged from the construction of the museum, and slates rescued from demolished buildings in Edinburgh.