bodily

Salutations chaps,

He slugs his way into the classroom, but not like a boxer. Like a gastropod, and fittingly, he's always late. If I've been careful, there are no empty spaces beside me. He falls into the nearest seat like a ziplocTM filled with liquid, and a slight belch escapes as the seal breaks. Once settled, he removes his coat. But this is not a coat of cloth or leather, this is a coat of mucus that lines his throat. He sounds like a distant vacuum stuck on a curtain and carries the same sickly pitch until finally devouring the curtain with a hollow thud. Removing his glasses, he rubs the bridge of his nose. Then he squints. Hard. The force of the action pushes his head forward slowly. His tensed muscles shake his tocsin head while his mouth gapes under the ferocity of his squint. He spends the remainder of the lecture plugging various holes with his fingers, desperate to keep his insides in, breathing laboriously from the effort. Periodically, he will notice other curtains and start his hungry vacuum again. His pitiful neighbors become progressively sallow, and lean at uncomfortable angles. I have spared you some details.
Nothing else in my experience has so vividly evoked the primal liquidity of the human being. Not 90-year-old ladies with transparent rice-paper skin. Not science class discussions. Not televised surgeries. This poor, leaky sack of oozing meat who can hardly drag himself from his seat. I want to believe that if you pricked him he would rupture and vanish in a mist of humors, not bleed. But, there's no escape. So brush your teeth, kiddies, trim your nails, keep an equilibrium.

Valedictions,
walter

c

Hello,
For the past few days, not before, I have seen a fire burning across the water, miles away. Its strength waxes and wanes, but as it burns it does not move. The flame is precisely confined. A closed system, it has no fuel. It burns itself.
As they drift, the night's clouds taunt the fire with their motion. In return, the orange intensity rends them from their innominate darkness, leaves them bare under its gaze.
Despite its fervor, I have come to realize that the fire no longer burns. I can still see its image there, confined to the same prison, raging. The clouds still suffer from its harsh dominion. Even in daylight, the image leaves ghostly green ashes when I close my eyes.
Yet, it is inconceivable that a fire continues to burn. I am looking at the past. It has starved in its cell, but the tardy light that trickles in my window has slowed; like it gives to stars, it has given a prolonged life to that fire, only hesitantly widening its silent, spherical elegy.

just sayin,
walter

brief interlude

Hello friends,
I advise you to spend a little time balancing a pen on a tube of chapstick. On a plain background, from the correct angle, it is a very calming construct to behold. Here I have reproduced the effect as best I could, foreshortened to appear three-dimensional: T

Tread lightly,
walter

Aussie Aussie Aussie

Quite early,
Another hike today, to Arthur's Seat this time. I can smell the mud and grass on my shoes like when I played soccer. I don't bend over to sniff them, because that would be stupid. The smell leaves the shoes and floats through the air to my nose. I do not bring this up for the olfactory sensation alone.
Here is my story about rugby:
Three of us went to Murrayfield stadium on Saturday night to see a rugby game. The game began with fanfare and three tenors. My Australian flatmate sang with them. Waltzing Matilda, because the gold and green Wallabies were playing. Good on ya. There was a flyover by a jet, but because it was night and therefore dark in the air that the jet needed to support its weight, it was louder than it was impressive.
At halftime, the announcer's Scottish accent told me and the others in the stadium that because it was Guy Fawkes day, we would be treated to a fireworks show set to the music of Kill Bill. He said Kill Bill very enthusiastically, but not enough that I couldn't tell he was faking.
Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the British Parliament a long time ago but they caught him. Then, they hanged him. Then, they drew and quartered him. Then, they burned him. Now, they celebrate his death by getting drunk and making things explode. There's also a big straw man built somewhere that they burn. Every year. The man is supposed to be him, Guy Fawkes. When I die, I want to be buried on the moon.
The second half was more interesting, because Scotland actually scored. Scotland is just about the worst rugby playing nation in some official group of rugby playing nations. They lost.
We decided to walk home because we were feeling intrepid. We decided to walk the same the direction as the buses that said From City because we were feeling intrepid. We didn't make it home and after about a half hour, we took the bus.

oy oy oy,
walter

ransacked

Breaking news,
My internet keeps breaking. An excerpt from an email sent to the ResNet help desk:

Internet Kidnapped!

EDINBURGH (Reuters) -- Late last week, trouble arose at the International Summit of Being Able to Do Homework. The keynote speaker, Internet, ascended to the podium and began its speech.
"I love everyone," spake Internet, on behalf of everything righteous and true. But the speech was violently cut short, as a small force of covert operatives from a group calling themselves ResNet sprung from their seats donning gasmasks and lobbing teargas into the auditorium. Amid shouts of, "Hail ResNet!" and "Die, Internet, die!" the guerrillas suckerpunched Internet in the kidneys and vanished, taking the stunned Internet with them and leaving an even more stunned and crying crowd.
Since the kidnapping, no members of Edinburgh University's residential system have been able to talk to Internet except during what ResNet labels its "operational hours", after which the rogue group must stuff a beaten and weary Internet back into its cold pen. Even now, this humble journalist writes under constant fear of disconnection.
The rogue vision of ResNet as yet remains cloudy. Inside sources claim they purport to being a service to students, but all attempts to contact ResNet directly have reached an uninformative recorded message.
No word of what has befallen Internet has reached the public, leaving everyone with the thought, "Why does the internet break all the time, guys? At least let people know what the problem is. Server issues? Maintenance?"
No one knows when or if this crisis will be resolved. The only recourse at this point is hope.

Signing off (hopefully not permanently),
walter

indefatigable

Evening comes earlier now,

I thought I'd relate to you a story about my room. I have two windows. One of these faces north, over Princes Street Gardens and New Town towards the Firth of Forth. The other faces west, towards the castle. My first few weeks here, a scarcely-audible buzzing noise would leak from the west window, and I summarily ignored it for quite some time due perhaps, and this is just a guess, to my overwhelming indifference to the subject.
The persistence finally got the best of me so I did some detecting, the end result of which being that I found a fly buzzing around the window. I had opened the north window periodically during the time I'd heard the buzzing, so I didn't feel a desperate urge to usher the little guy onward, and I left him to his business. Actually, I figured he (forgive me for personifying the fly as a he, but I, being a male myself, find it easier to relate to a male fly) would croak at some point. But no, somehow he has endured, and I've grown accustomed to his futile consitutionals. The buzz-thump rhythm while I type. I even named him.
Then, this very morning, as I was saying hello, he hit the window with a thud and fell to the sill. He had landed on his back and twitched momentarily trying to right himself. After that, it was all silence. I didn't know what to do. I stood there. For about thirty seconds. Nothing happened. I solemnly considered how best to pay my respects.
As I stood there in my distress, the little trooper hurled himself, suddenly and viciously, off the window sill, which sits slightly below chest-level and from which any falling object would plummet behind my desk. There was nothing for him there but ignominious and anonymous decay in the slight depression where the carpet meets the wall. That's just not right, I thought.
And apparently, he agreed. After falling about a foot, he twisted and caught the air with his wings and resumed his station on the sill, this time on his feet.
How could anyone be unmoved by such a display of courage, gentlefriends? I went directly to the kitchen, retrieved a mug, scooped him into it, and set it on the ledge outside the window. Outside. With the window cracked, so he could make a choice. I left him this way in private to give him time to consider. When I returned, he was gone. I'm glad he didn't take the mug with him, it's the only one I have.

In quiet reflection,
walter

There is fog

Welcome back,
I hiked to the top of calton hill today.
Various monuments dotted the grassy summit, including a giant unfinished parthenon. They ran out of money after constructing only one side of it, and it was left as it was.
It was strangely cold, like the penguin exhibit at sea world. The low fog ceiling could have hidden the speakers and fans and insulation. Some cold wants to kill, this cold wanted to make me feel at home.
If you take a kayak, or any seagoing craft for that matter, around the back of seaworld, you can see the outside enclosure for the waddling birds. They have little military tents and they plod around behind a chainlink fence, making belching noises and smelling decidedly like fish-eaters.
On the way back from carlton hill, I descended for the first time into the narrow Princes Street Gardens and strolled among the trees and grass. They used to be a lake of shit, but you wouldn't know it to look at them now. Among the fountains and expanses of closely-trimmed grass, there was a single veranda behind yellow tape, completely blackened but still standing. Nothing else was touched, and though at one point I thought I saw amongst the crowd of people a pyknic unit of black and white, it was only a dog.
And that's that.

To the reclamation,
walter

(fumo...)

Buongiorno!
Bologna has a beastly airport. I noticed when I arrived. The floor is covered in red marble with white veins, like a cross-section of Italian meat. I had to stand in a zig-zag line and felt trapped in an intestine waiting to be digested. Then I took a taxi to Barbara's.
"Via _____ Vente Due."
"Grunt."
"Grazie." Money.
Italy is a place with good food and strange people. The current trend is the mullet, worn by both men and women. Men gel up their business end into a tiny little mohawk, and let their party end dangle. Free to the wind, while wearing jackets with the collar up. Barbara and I went to Florence for a day to take in the sights. Short trip on the train. Surprisingly close to things, Bologna.
I went to Barbara's German class. You have to respect a language that can describe pink as hell rot.
We had other exciting adventures, too, and I'd love to tell you about them. But, I woke up at 3 this morning to come home, so I am tired.

Sleep with confidence,
your friend and mine,
walter

justice

Good evening,
I have two things to post:
Interesting fact the first, there are shops that have the suffix -monger here. cheesemonger. fishmonger. That's awesome.
Interesting fact the second, tonight a person walking in front of me was egged from a car. I sprinted after the car in question for about two blocks, waiting for it to hit a red light. It did, but as I was just coming up to it, it ran the red light and took off. But, not before I could read the plates. The point of my story: if you have any knowledge of how to find the owner of Scottish license plate Y374 SOO, please get in contact with me.

Remain ever vigilant,
Walter

mission accomplished

Good morning,
I woke up early on a Saturday to go stand in a crowd for the opening of the Scottish Parliament. I was not really sure what that meant, and I wasn't sure what I was waiting to see. There were a few archers standing around, and a few people dressed as peasants; it seemed like an SCA gathering. Then some kids got up and started prancing around and saying stuff and singing, but there were too many helicopters buzzing around for anyone to hear them. Then there was a flyover by some jet, that looked more like a cargo plane than anything actually impressive, but the crowd seemed to like that well enough. Then some old lady in fuchsia pulled up in some expensive car, and people started pushing and craning their necks to see her. But then, and this is where it gets interesting, the parade started. And who led the parade out but the immortal and redoubtable Sir Sean Connery? So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I have seen him, he was within 25 feet of my humble self, he waved at me and smiled. It was almost as if he was saying, "Yes, I received those letters from your dorm, and they touched me deeply. Thank you, Loro. . . thank you."
After that, I left; there was nothing else to see.
I will never wash these eyes again.

sincerely,
walter

it's a secret to everyone

Good evening,
A quick note to keep you informed: upon leaving the small restaurant at which my friends and I ate, we were quickly accosted by a large group of females, worthy of armour hot dogs, dressed as constables. A constable is a police officer, which is someone who enforces laws. They weren't really constables, mind you, because it would be redundant to have that many in the same place, especially when there was no crime happening there. They did not tell us why they were dressed as they were.
I also went fencing on wednesday, which was the first time in about four years that I had done so. That's about a fifth of my entire life. I will go again tomorrow.
And nothing more comes to mind.

Be well and take care,
walter

good faith attempt

Hello again,

"Are you the real radio vandal?"
I was looking at the face of a gaunt Scottish woman, speaking in a thick accent through smoke-stained teeth. Before I could decipher her question, she shrugged and continued walking. She must have assumed from the blank stare she received in answer that I was not, in fact, the real radio vandal.
I just wanted some groceries. One of the first things I noticed here was how expensive everything is, food most importantly. A ten-pound burrito. My brother, his name is George Charles Talbott, could probably eat one. You should meet him sometime, he's a great guy. Now, I've joined his elite company.
"Excuse me, have you heard of the real radio vandal?"
Again a stunned pause, but the boy was gone before I could ask.
I said yes to the next one, just to see what it was all about. She got excited, and I felt bad, because apparently there was a large reward involved. Oops. Sorry lady.

I also exploded minestrone soup while "cooking" my "dinner"
is that possible?

With warmest regards,
walter

first post from edinburgh

hello,
my name is walter talbott. I live in edinburgh for a year because I am learning here. Edinburgh is in scotland, which is, in turn, in the united kingdom. Is good, no?
everything is different here than where i used to be from, which was stanford, california, the united states. the weather is cold. When I walk into class there is sun and dry, when i walk out there is sun and wet. How did it get there? it rains. but sometimes it doesn't really rain, it's just wet. the air is wet, the ground is wet, you (I) are (am) wet.
i can see the castle from my room, they light it up at night and it glows orange over a big dark cliff.
I have roommates. Three of them. And one empty room that may be filled later in the year. These are my roommates:
Darryl- Canadian.
James- Canadian.
Brian - Australian.
I should call them flatmates, because I live in a flat. Janette cleans it every monday and wednesday, but we need to keep the dishes off the counter so she can wipe it off.
I don't have internet in my room yet, I am using a computer in the cluster. The cluster is a room with computers in. That's what they say here.
The past two mornings I have awoken to the smell of burning brush. A thicket was on fire twice outside my window. This is not normal in Edinburgh. I have seen nothing else ablaze during my wanderings about the city proper.
Such is all I can muster.

sincerely,
walter

hello

new post to the world. I promise nothing.