03/03/2010
Hello everyone,
I’m halfway through my stay here in Edinburgh and every day brings me closer to the day I can come back home to Bangalore and hug my family.
Spring is looking timidly at us here in Edinburgh between the cracks in the curtains. Small yellow, pink and purple flowers are starting to sprout from under the trees and the days are definitely getting longer. Almost normal now from the absurd 3-4 hours of sunshine a day like in mid-winter. I see and hear many more birds and am starting to see squirrels again too. The leafless trees now have dark red buds on their branches which in time will spring forth with life- fresh green leaves and flowers. I can hardly wait.
There is day and night for us in India. The Sun always rises the next day. Here, the whole year is a like a day. I’m finishing night- lifeless, quiet and dark. Birds herald the morning- sparrows, pigeons, seagulls, magpies, (and there are many I don’t even know the name of), small cute ones with yellow and grey feathers. Some just small and back. Julia, my local host, says that the river near her house gets many more birds during spring and summer- so many types that ornithologists come in groups to watch.) Spring is the beginning of life. The season of hope.
I’m reading Wuthering Heights. The descriptions fit very well with my own surroundings. But it is such an intense book. Sometimes even absurdly so. Catherine and Heathcliff are both so passionate/crazy. It reminds me of Joker from Dark Knight which I watched only recently. These characters, except their tendencies to violence, are so crazy and intense – I quite like them! It somehow reminds me of the splinter I had in Slough. I don’t think I told you the story 🙂
It had snowed and we went for a walk. I tried grabbing at some snow with my gloved hands and felt a sharp pain- a thorn I thought. A day later, I saw the black speck that was causing me discomfort. Over the next week I used tweezers and pins and even scissors to cut around and get it out. I gave two gaps where the skin grew back. I had decided that it should just get into my body and be annihilated and feed my immune system cells. Instead the pain grew sharp. Enough was enough. Over two or three hours, I picked at the overgrown skin and drilled a hole (it did look like a little well) in my skin to the very layer under my skin. It hurt. The pain was intense and I wondered in amazement at how much a simple hole in the skin can hurt. I quite liked it because I was inflicting it myself (with adequate help from M :)) and I was in control. She drew back not wanting to hurt me more. I plunged in and in an agonising go, I caught it and pulled it out with some attached skin. It took many days for the skin to grow back, forming a little bump and many weeks for the bump to even out to how normal it looks today. So intense pain, when you are in control, can be quite interesting.
I have a two-day fMRI and EEG course starting tomorrow. It should be interesting.
Let the feeling of spring get under your skin 🙂