Episodes
7 days ago
7 days ago
I didn’t want to wake Denise the next morning, between the beer and the late night I knew she’d be in a rotten mood if she didn’t get her beauty sleep, so I snuck out as quietly as I could, to get a cup of coffee.
The streets were already filled with music and dancing and the rhythms of the drums, the festival atmosphere rushed me in the middle of the street, and carried me along with it, even a recluse like me.
Life unfolded in all its joy, Fiona, and it looked so effortless, as if all its tribulations and cares were nothing but another performance at the festival.
I had a sudden insight into the lightness of being, which my sister seems to understand so well: you just don’t think about it, you get up, go out and live, that’s it. No expectations, no reservations, no past.
I always thought of living in the now as some sort of gimmick people who have no plans like to pass for life philosophy, and I’m a little embarrassed by that now, when the collective life of Kirkwall flows through me, making me part of everything.
The rhythm of the drums induced some sort of trance, muffling the other sounds and sharpening my hearing and I got a little lightheaded from the bright light and the sounds, so I grabbed an outdoor table at the corner cafe, ordered an espresso and closed my eyes to clear my head.
Friday Apr 26, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 18 Warrior!
Friday Apr 26, 2024
Friday Apr 26, 2024
The green meadow was quiet. There was a large crowd present, but no one made a sound, standing on the grass in a circle, in the light of the torches, waiting.
You are standing in the middle, wearing the white dress with green ribbons, and you have fragrant white flowers and green ribbons in your hair, very thin ribbons which make it look like that of a non-human creature, like an undine or a selkie.
Your mentor waits for you by the tallest stone, standing poised for the ceremony, and all your council is in attendance, dressed in festive attire and donning wild flower garlands.
Is this your wedding, Fiona? I can’t see the groom, they’re all women. Some rite of passage, maybe?
You walk across the circle of grass with slow ceremonial steps, as if in a trance, your eyes affixed on the top of the tallest stone, perfectly aligned with the moonrise of the solstice, and only then I realize it must be night, but it’s still daylight, and although the giant moon already rose above the stone, casting its long shadow towards you, the sun is shining too, casting your shadow towards it.
The two shadows met, and you walked inside their joint corridor of darkness, while young girls in white dresses threw flowers at your feet.
I always see your hair braided, Fiona, and I didn’t realize how long it was. It is let down now, and trails behind you like a train.
You walk alone, barefoot on the path of grass and flowers, while the moon rises quickly in the sky, and the sun finally goes to rest, and daylight dims to twilight, but not really darkness, because the moon is so huge and so close it bathes everything in its silver light.
Friday Apr 26, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 19 Elverhoj
Friday Apr 26, 2024
Friday Apr 26, 2024
I had promised Denise I’d come to all the rehearsals, not knowing how many they were going to have. Three hours in, watching the same performance fragments over and over, I was on the verge of losing my mind, and my bum was numb from sitting on stone.
“How much practice could you possibly need for an improv performance?”
“That shows how much you know about theater,” Denise commented, annoyed by the interruption, and turned around to face the cast. “Let’s take it from the beginning of the dance again.”
Oh, God, I don’t think I can take another repetition of this dance.
“I know what you’re thinking, Ethel.” My sister hissed at me through her labored breath. “If you have no appreciation for the arts, why don’t you prop up that boulder? It’s about to fall.”
‘Fall where?’ I thought, bewildered. We were in the middle of the street, and everything rested securely on its stone pavers.
My sister ignored me and started her dance again, a very agitated choreography set on absolute silence, which was supposed to engender the emotional waves of a Wagnerian opera, but with no sound at all.
Friday Apr 19, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 17 In the Beginning Was The Wave
Friday Apr 19, 2024
Friday Apr 19, 2024
I couldn’t sleep, and neither could Denise. The sun woke us up when I had barely slept three hours. As for Denise, she had made up her sleep deficit during the day and now was sharp as a tack.
We drove to the stones of Stenness with the rosy glow of dawn behind us. The midnight sun bathed our shoulders and put haloes around our hair, and when we got out of the car in the middle of the wilderness, it compelled our silence.
We walked in silence for a while through this fantastic landscape, where the stones felt like a natural land feature, like they’ve been there forever, carved by the storms and the winds.
“Come on, Ethel! Not fun being old, eh?”
I was born two years before Denise, a detail she never forgets to highlight when she deems it relevant.
“See you in two years, Denise. I’ll remember to ask you then.”
“This is awesome!” My sister started running up the gentle slope, twirling and dancing like an ancient priestess entranced by her deity, charged by the monoliths. “I am the goddess of Stenness! I bid glad tidings to all the little people.”
She looked it too, a young goddess, one with the land, dancing with the grace of a willow branch.
“Dance, Betty Lou! Don’t be a stick in the mud! Dance with me!”
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 16 Marwick’s Hole
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
I wondered if there was any sort of protocol when talking to ghosts. Is one allowed to call on them? Or is that considered too forward and one should wait to be acknowledged first?
It seems rather rude to disturb the peace of an entity without the consent of the latter, especially when their home base is always overrun with people.
Denise adamantly disagreed, saying Mr. Sinclair obviously enjoyed the company of the living and he’d be really disappointed to find out we came to the cathedral and didn’t bother to call.
Unfortunately for my sister, our friendly guide seemed to be otherwise engaged; besides, the church was filled with the living, anyway.
I’d stopped keeping track of the calendar in Kirkwall, my independent research schedule didn’t seem to find any usefulness for it and didn’t realize we had come to the cathedral on a Sunday.
The service was almost over when we arrived, and we slid into one of the pews as quietly as possible, careful not to disturb the ceremony.
The familiar chants lulled me into a soft reverie as my eyes wondered, taking in the austere details of the Romanesque architecture, and I was startled when the soft voice behind me, a voice rather recognizable now, whispered from very close by, “I told you, young lady: second pillar on the right.”
Friday Apr 05, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 15 Betty the White Lady
Friday Apr 05, 2024
Friday Apr 05, 2024
Upon returning from Birsay the following morning, I found Denise sleeping across the doorway.
“You forgot to leave a key,” she looked at me cross, but relieved I returned before it started raining.
“The landlady could have let you in. Why didn’t you ask her?”
“She’s out of town. How was your trip?”
“Uneventful,” I didn’t elaborate. How was I to tell her that, cliche as it sounds, my journey to Birsay had been more interesting than arriving at the destination? Once there, I couldn’t think of things to do, walked around for a couple of hours and headed back. “How was your day? Did you have fun with your friends?”
“And then some! Do you know people think your Fiona called out to you so you can find her bones and lay her to rest? They think you are a white lady who walks between worlds. Neil said that if you go to the Maeshowe cairn during solstice, she’ll talk to you then.”
I didn’t mention seeing Fiona when I visited Maeshowe, not to my sister, not to anyone else. Except the young man, the tour guide who dragged me out of there before I made a total fool of myself, nobody paid enough attention to notice anything unusual.
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 14 - Viking Poetry
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
It wouldn’t have been Denise if she didn’t change our plans at the last minute, based on the schedules of her new friends. Two days she’d been in a foreign country where she didn’t know a soul and she already made friends, promised to help them set up the stage for their Avant-Garde play and left me flopping in the wind.
Strange how one can still get distressed over being excluded when one left home for a solitary pursuit and went far away from the familiar places and people in order to find oneself.
I put on my best face for Denise’s benefit, and picked a destination to give her, annoyed more by my own reaction than my sister’s predictably harebrained schedule and arbitrary choice of activities.
“Are you sure you’re not mad at me?” She gave me her loveliest smile, attached to a guilty cat's gaze. “Promise me you’re not mad at me, Louise! I hate the thought of leaving you here all by yourself.”
She only called me Louise when she wanted to get on my good side.
“Denise, you weren’t supposed to come here in the first place. I’ve been here alone for months now, remember? I have work. And plans.”
“Ok, if you say so.”
She headed for the door, then changed her mind.
“You know, you could still come with us! I’m sure everyone would love to meet you and they could use another pair of hands.”
“Thanks. Pass.”
“Ok. Just call if you change your mind.”
“Denise! Go!”
Monday Mar 18, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 13 Earth to Betty
Monday Mar 18, 2024
Monday Mar 18, 2024
My sister surprised me and came to Kirkwall two weeks early, loaded with goodies from home like a female Santa Claus, to help me get in the spirit of the festival, she said, although it’s more likely mom sent her to check up on me and provide her with the precious details she thinks I don’t want to share.
“Where is my instrument, Denise?”
“Oh,” she mocked. “You wanted that? Won’t your dead crush disapprove of such frivolities?”
I see you dancing around the fire, Fiona, giddy like a child, and carefree. What on earth gave you that lightness of being when your life was so dark and perilous?
“No,” I replied. “No, she would not. Give!”
She reached into her duffle bag and pulled out my ukulele by the sound hole, all tangled up in a knotted mess of cables and undergarments that instantly elevated my blood pressure.
“How could you shove it in your bag like that? It’s a miracle it got here in one piece! I’m starting to remember why I never let you touch my stuff!”
“Relax, it’s a ukulele, not the Holy Grail,” she faked giving it to me and quickly pulled it back. “You don’t get it unless you promise me you’ll play it at the festival.”
“Denise, I only know ‘Over the Rainbow’ and I’m not playing that.”
Wednesday Mar 13, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 12 Back at Skara Brae
Wednesday Mar 13, 2024
Wednesday Mar 13, 2024
You get mixed up in stories and legends and soon you can’t distinguish them from facts anymore, because history and legend are uninterrupted threads twining through the fabric of time, and the events’ meanings connect across centuries, as if they are all a part of a greater whole we could see if we lived long enough. How long is long enough, Fiona? Although I shouldn’t ask you, should I?
In all the times I dreamt of you, I’ve never seen you old, my princess. I can’t see past that fateful day whose menace prompted you to pack all your power and will inside a gull and set it free. You looked so young it broke my heart, but I don’t think you died that day. In fact, I think you never died at all.
Hodr of the mail coat lets the halter of the arm hang on my hawk-trodden hawk-gallows;
I know how to make the pin-string of the shield-tormentor ride the gallows of the spear-storm.
The feeder of the battle-hawk enjoys the greater praise.
The florid poetry of your ancestors reverberates in the halls of the Gods, making you smile across centuries, fair child of Norway. What are you smiling about? What is it you’re not telling me?
Wednesday Mar 06, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 11 - East Over Water I Fared
Wednesday Mar 06, 2024
Wednesday Mar 06, 2024
I stopped by the church yesterday and the mystery of the black tombstones was explained: the graveyard experienced a massive fire, yet the church was unharmed, not even a speck of smoke or soot.
I bet you’d be asking yourself right now, Fiona, how does one set stone on fire, and you’d be right. The priest couldn’t explain it either, hence the miracle designation of the phenomenon. It happened so long ago no written records of it remained, and oral history can be very imaginative in these parts. It’s hard to separate truth from fantasy after all these centuries.
I’ll make a record of my notes and organize them later, I don't want to forget the stories I heard, which, although they may be unbelievable to most, are still too fascinating to ignore.
Legend has it a beautiful young maiden, which strangely matches your description, used to sneak out at night and come to the cemetery to meet her beloved. The affair went on for years, and the maiden’s parents started to worry when she turned away every suitor that knocked on their door. Why, she was turning twenty and she was already an old maid, right, Fiona?
There is nothing new under the sun but our perception of things. Technology advances, civilizations flourish and fall, but the human spirit never changes. We are born with all the storylines able to touch our soul. These basic tales bind us through time and cultural differences and allow us to relate to each other while we harbor completely different views of the world. The rest is just letting life flow quietly through you.