Regards,
Edinburgh is fairly clean, as far as cities go. The unavoidable gumspots dot the sidewalk, but, where in other cities there would be discarded fastfood bags and pizza boxes, here there is clean stone. Don't be mistaken, the dark denizens who haunt the pubs do their best to scar the streets, smashing used cigarettes with their shoes before stumbling home to sleep. But there is a force that no ragged drunk can overcome, which rages through the teeming city crying fell dominion. The city retreats into itself as the invisible chthonophage scourges it clean.
I seal the cracks in my window with tissues to keep it out, and it beats protest against the panes. If I play my music loud enough, I can't hear its complaints, and watch from comfort as it shuttles the chaff left to right. When the weather abates, everything is gone. But to where?
A few weeks ago, I constructed a sail in preparation for the next storm.
When my window began to rattle, I attached my sail with sturdy rope to a harness, and strapped the harness on. In various pockets, I stowed water and mixed nuts for energy, just in case. I opened the window, ready to deploy the sail and see where the wind would take me. Before I could act, the wind reached in and yanked me out. I must have hit my head on the sill, because I can't remember what happened next. My sail probably worked, though, because I awoke with no more than a mild headache and a few abrasions on my left arm, and definitely nowhere I recognized.
I was lying on a dusty surface, dirt with a few tufts of grass. The harness was still strapped to me, so I groggily loosened it before standing and looking around. It was a hazy twilight, I could see about twenty feet before lines faded into a neutral, streetlight-orange fog.
There was an alleyway behind me, and two stone walls stretched away from it. The wind down the alley was strong enough to impede a much stronger person than myself, so I put it to my back and wandered into the silent fog.
You can't see ghosts, you can't hear them. Old houses and restaurants that claim to be haunted by wailing victims and forlorn, jealous lovers that toss plates in the storeroom have always annoyed me. You smell ghosts, and that's all. It's a mundane cryptaesthesia, one we all unwittingly possess. There, between the exhaust from buses and the soup boiling over on the stove, in the olfactory cracks, exists a record of the past.
I don't believe in ghosts, but if I did, my foggy surroundings would be the place I'd go to encounter them. It wasn't pleasant to breathe, the piles of collected refuse that faded in and out of sight while I walked reeked of decay.
After wandering for a while, I met an old man. He was not tall, he had thin, wiry white hair that shot from his head like motion-lines drawn by an overeager 10-year-old cartoonist. He was eating a sandwich. I introduced myself, and he said hello. I offered him some of my mixed nuts, because what else was I supposed to do. His eyes lit up and he took them with a word of thanks. I asked him to tell me where I was, and his eyes clouded over again. In a distant and wistful voice, he said this was not a place for someone like me. Before I could ask any more of him he wheeled his wide-eyed head around, flipped me off, and told me to leave immediately.
I would have been happy to oblige, but I wasn't quite sure how, so I continued walking. Eventually, I met the wall again, and followed it back to the alleyway.
I didn't bring many clothes to Edinburgh, mostly because I couldn't fit them in my luggage and I didn't want to ship anything here. So few clothes, in fact, that I was familiar with each piece, and had a mental catalogue of my sartorial resources. I do my laundry in a little room that I need to walk outside to reach. Earlier this year, I lost a sock from my favorite pair. I didn't know what happened to it, but my post-laundry audit came up one short, and its lonely partner sat unused in a drawer.
This time, when the alleyway's outline sharpened out of the fog, there was something unfamiliar about the scene. On the ground there was a large manila envelope, and a piece of paper. I opened the envelope, and there was my sock. It sparkled white at the bottom of the envelope, it was just as I remembered it. I was surprised, and happy.
Turning my attention to the piece of paper, I noticed it contained the following words written in faded grey ink:
You are free to go. If you leave your sock as an offering, the wind will continue to blow. If you take your sock, the wind will leave Edinburgh. Be careful, do not choose hastily.
I took my sock, of course, because I don't have many. I walked down the alley into an unfamiliar street. I didn't take note of where the entrance was, I walked until I recognized familiar landmarks, and came home. There hasn't been a windy day since. As I walk to class, or the grocery store, I happily kick soda cans with a spring in my step and glance down at my complete pair of awesome socks.
take care of yourself,
walter