Perl, my academic sister, and I took the morning bus to Dundee, a major city about 20 minutes north of St Andrews. We were shopping for hiking shoes, windbreaker, and waterpoof pants for the Breakaway hillwalking trip tomorrow. It ended up being the ideal shopping situation: we went for what we needed, found a good deal, bought it, and it was done. No feelings of being broke, purposeless window shopping, or being afflicted by mindless consumerism!
After shopping, Perl and I walked to a cemetery behind the Overgate Shopping Centre called Howff Graveyard. We spent a good while sitting on a old stone bench having deep conversations about life and death. Perhaps the setting was a bit too cheesily appropriate, but the environment really does reinforce the meaning of your words. For example, my philosophy professor reviewed the principle of non-contradiction the other day, giving the example that one cannot rationally believe that "It is raining" and "It is not raining" at the same time. I've heard the example phrase so many times before and was zoning out, but a women with an umbrella appeared for a split-second in the rain-streaked window behind him as he proclaimed, "It is not raining!" Quite dramatic.
While talking, Perl and I also tried to read the faded epitaphs on the gravestones. Most of them were so worn by time that it was impossible to decipher. The ones that we were able to read, we read with the same detached curiosity that a layperson would have while reading plaques at a museum. The layperson at the museum doesn't have the background knowledge to appreciate art like an expert does; he can read all the details about certain art movements, influences from other obscure painters, and a certain acrylic medium with the desire to understand and appreciate. And to a certain extent, he can indeed appreciate but not to the intimate level that the expert can. There's no background framework to connect all the obscure facts and tidbits about the work of art. Similarly, the background stories of these dead people were long gone to us...
An old lady gently interrupted us, asking when the Dundee tour that left from the graveyard was leaving. Perl and I didn't know, and tried to help, but eventually we found that it wasn't running that day. It was a shame, but she joined us on the bench. We found out that she was turning 80 in a month. She wasn't a tourist as we assumed, but lived her whole life in Dundee. She fondly showed a lock of hair she had kept of her dead husband, and a pocketwatch from a recent trip to Paris. She visited the World Trade Center precisely a year before it crashed, and liked to travel. Perl and I shared our motivations for traveling, and our life stories about Las Vegas and Austria, too.
Before we said goodbye her, she recommended a good place to eat for lunch–a pub called the Counting House. Over lunch, Perl said she was inspired because she's talked with just as many old people who are bitter and full of regret. I said that it was a nice experience connecting briefly with someone: I usually am too shy to start conversations with strangers like that. I think that people our age tend to associate mainly with people our age. That isn't necessarily wrong, but you miss out on other perspectives that can only come with time. On the bus ride back to St Andrews, brilliant sunset splashed the Tay Bridge and the water below with soft shades of pink and orange. I ended the day by going to Dominic's 23rd birthday party at the Vic.
It was great going to bed, feeling connected to everyone, friends and strangers alike.
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| I didn't take a picture of Howff Graveyard, so here's a picture of St Andrew's Cathedral instead! |
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