Edinburgh Days, or Doing What I Want to Do

Mind Ajar

Mind Ajar In THE RIGHT PLACE (1924), C. E. Montague described “knowing a road.” To know a road entailed more than “seeing it all once or twice from a seat in a car.” On the other hand, a person did not have to “learn it by heart, to the last house and tree.” “There is a mean,” Montague explained, “to know it as people soon come to know the daily way home from a new place of work. Of that you make no set study; you do not cram it up; rather you leave your mind merely ajar, to let in such ideas of it as may come.” When confronted by the unfamiliar or the disturbing, some people treat their minds like doors, shutting them, slamming bolts home and hunkering by the lock, mallet in hand, ready to bludgeon unwelcome ideas that might seep through the keyhole. Other people remove minds from hinges and, becoming social anemones, let thought wash over them, waving this way or that, wafting with the fashionable. Montague’s suggestion to seek a mean and keep a mind ajar is good advice. In Edinburgh small things slip past the sweep attached to my mind, awakening and entertaining me. As I am unimportant, so they are insignificant . Still, they form the landscape of my days. They are the roadside attractions I see and ponder as I amble through weeks, mind ajar. Last Wednesday I explored the Grange Cemetery off Beaufort Road. Epitaphs in the graveyards I’ve wandered in Edinburgh had been almost to a stone grim or resigned. Because many graves in the Grange Cemetery were comparatively fresh, dating from the nineteenth century, Mind Ajar 97 I hoped to find inscriptions that were, if not joyous or playful, at least refined and polished, finished, this last not just stamping “The End” on a life but being balanced and conversational. Alas, the only engravings I read that were conversational smacked of commerce and gossip. Carved into the stone marking the grave of a merchant was “Also Mary Stoddart His Wife Second Daughter of Admiral Stoddart.” After granting that Mary was a second wife as well as second daughter, not the mate of the merchant’s early amorous years, surely she must have been more than a pedigree. In 1873 John Ferguson died. On his gravestone he was more occupation and advertisement than person. Ferguson died at thirty-five “after sixteen years,” his epitaph stated, “as a commercial traveller with Mr. William Dickinson Merchant Edinburgh.” “Words, words, words,” I muttered, quoting Hamlet. Nearby a stone palm sprouted from a marble planter at the base of a tombstone, flourishing despite the snow on the ground. The palm was seven feet tall, nine leaves erupting from the top in cowlicks, wrapping three bundles of dates like grocer’s paper. Suddenly I noticed stones themselves. Obelisks rose above graves in the hundreds like scouring rush at the damp end of a meadow. Scrolls unraveled. Families of angels gazed skyward. Celtic crosses flourished in battalions. Turrets defended keeps, and doves perched on the upper right sides of stones. The doves always leaned forward , heads low, tails raised, dividing the stones, the tops of the stones bald, the birds themselves parts run wildly astray, their feathers clumps of unruly hair. Urns sat atop many markers—236, in fact, 129 of the urns shrouded, from behind appearing hunched, looking like owls. Of course my numbers might be a little off. While I counted, a pair of tree creepers distracted me, darting about the cemetery with a flock of tits. The sight of a white cat sunning itself on mat outside a caretaker’s house also broke my concentration. Moreover, thoughts themselves occasionally disrupted my enumeration. At the end of a long alley of stones near the loggia of a Greek temple I pondered setting Loppie Groat up in an essay as “a chicken merchant.” Later I considered getting a tattoo, the only tattoos suitable for people my age being those of a walker or a wheelchair. The next day near the institute I approached two strangers and solicited their advice, asking where on my hide such a tattoo should be placed. Neither person replied. The two must have been natives of Edinburgh. If they had been from Glasgow, they would have responded. Folks from Glasgow are comparatively lively. On Monday I bought groceries at Tesco. When I handed 98 Edinburgh...