Enter Killarney

After I finished up my studies at Oxford, I had a week's worth of vacation before my flight home. I decided to go to Ireland, and I ended up going alone. After a little research, I picked out a town in the southwest called Killarney. It's got great mountains and lakes, and several famously scenic bike rides in the vicinity.

To help you understand the events of my first day there from my perspective, I need to tell you about my preceding sleep history. I stayed up until 1:00 am on Sunday (July 22) so that I could catch a bus to Stansted airport. The ride was three hours long, and I was tired, so I propped myself up with the seatbelt and put my head against the window. I probably got an hour or two of shoddy sleep. Then I stumbled off the bus and into the airport, prodding my eyelids to try and unstick my contacts a little. I weathered airport processing with a gritty, humorless stare, and eventually boarded my tiny little airplane at about 6:00 am. On the plane, I sat next to a guy named James and opted to talk to him rather than taking the hour of sleep.

James was the beginning of Killarney day one. I sat next to him because he looked intelligent and friendly, and he turned out to be both. James was 38, if memory serves. He had dark hair, close cut, and about two days' worth of stubble. There was a snip of purple yarn knotted around his wrist so that he did not forget about his young daughter. We had a good, wide ranging discussion on the plane, and decided to explore Killarney together, a least for a little while. He advised me that whenever it's not raining in Ireland, you really shouldn't be inside sleeping, so we went ahead and rented some bikes the moment we hit town.

For present and future reference, here are some of the routes and locations I'll be discussing: I love Google maps.

After discovering my new favorite (continental) breakfast, which is mandarin orange slices on a bed of rice crispies and milk, we pedaled off toward Dunloe gap. It wasn't a particularly long ride, but it was tough at times because I had all my possessions bungied to the back of the bike. The highway got narrow, and we hugged the bushy shoulder of the road as cars flew by. Those Irish folk seem pretty jaded to cyclists. When the landscape finally opened on either side, I could really see that we were in a beautiful country. Everything was effortlessly green, and the grassy fields rolled out into the distance. The mountains off to our left appeared much closer then they really were in the clear air. It wasn't hot like a North Carolina summer, it was perfect.

As we drew near to Dunloe gap and turned off the highway, we started to see impressive clods of poop here and there on the road. They're called jaunting cars - open two-wheeled carriages pulled by ponies. We passed several on our way into the valley. Our proximity to the mountains and the size of my grin became irrevocably linked. When we paused at a couple shops near the base of the mountain, I knew it was time for another Haggis Hill experience.

James prefers fishing to mountain climbing, particularly because he has weak knees, so we decided it was time to split up. We made vague plans to communicate and meet up later, but I never got around to calling him. Sometimes it's the simplest little oversights that haunt you. That's OK, though, because I had a mountain to climb, and a good deed to do at the top. Next post: Buddy Mountain.

Haggis Hill

Here's an adventure that I alluded to way back in the post about breakfast. I was eager to write about it back then, but I was waiting to get some pictures from my companions first. Unfortunately, I forgot to save my own pictures online before handing in my rental laptop, so I have even less material to work with than before. Anyway, here's an excerpt from the breakfast post to jog your memory:

Breakfast 3: Haggis Heroes
The third breakfast came with a side of expeditionary bravado. Not only did it come with haggis, but the meal was the preamble to my spontaneous mountain climbing plan. While touring a castle the day prior, I saw a really cool hill-mountain-thing off in the distance, and declared that I was going to walk to it and then climb on top of it. I captured the imaginations of two others, and this grand adventure was set in stone. Time for a breakfast of champions. Better make it an English breakfast.

Well, the plan went forward. After breakfast, we bought some water and sandwiches, stuffed them in backpacks, and started walking across town toward the hill. We decided to first claim a closer bit of high ground so we could better plan our approach. There were some very old looking structures up there, including a group of pillars supporting nothing but the clouds. This was the vantage point for the photo in the breakfast excerpt.

Before I get too far, let me give my fellow explorers a quick biography. First is Ryan G. He was known as Ryan G because that is the extent of his name that he divulges on facebook. This is the portrait that Ryan G has chosen for his facebook profile. He's a good guy, positive attitude, and he'll be living on the same hall as me for the next year at NCSU.

This second fellow is Brett Pearce. He is a gung-ho football player turned NASA employee. When he hears an aircraft, he looks up, period. This picture is the most representative out of those he has chosen for his profile. Brett is all about power, preparedness, and testosterone in general, to the exclusion of social trifles.

It was with these two gentlemen that I struck out for adventure. We rambled through town in the right general direction while Brett discussed the optimal ways of blinding and maiming football opponents. Apparently it's not good to have a smear of icy hot across your forehead when sweat is pouring down your face. What a sport. When we reached the foot of our impressive hill, we found that there was a paved path almost all the way up. How very offensive. We immediately strode off through the grass to find our own way.

The nice thing about this hill is that it's very tall and completely clear of trees and thick brush. We had complete freedom to explore and pick our own pitch and terrain. It's also quite nice to track and appreciate your progress through the entire hike. Sometimes walking through a corridor of trees starts to feel like a road trip to the beach. Are we there yet? On Haggis Hill, you're always there, and you're always loving it.

After we got to the top, we went down into a breezy saddle of grass to eat lunch in the sun. Then we walked down to a plateau and traced the edge of a cliff. It was along this cliff that I snapped my own facebook profile picture. Beauty and sunshine under a dark, ominous cloud. Sounds like a vague and pretentious metaphor, but no angst intended; I just like the picture.

On the way back, that cloud opened up and armed the wind with shockingly cold rain. Fortunately, we were all carrying warmth from hiking about, and everybody was in the mood to laugh. We stood at the edge of that cliff and watched the rain whip around the mountain. Then the weather slapped me. A gust of wind blew sharply up and over the edge of the cliff and caught me across the face with a sheet of rain. It was an icy wet slap, and I was quite affronted, but what can you do. The sun came back out on our return walk through town, and all was forgiven.

Filling in the gaps

I arrived home last Friday afternoon, so I've been in Raleigh for a while now. I'm already adjusted to the time zone, and soon I will give up complaining about this oppressively hot weather.


However, there are a number of stories from Europe that are still untold because I didn't have the time or resources to do them justice. I'm going to start typing them up, but just keep in mind that they're completely anachronistic now. This blog is no longer the finger on the racing pulse of my life abroad. Alas.

Free Internet Causes Lines

I have a ton of things to say about Ireland, but I can't type them up in good conscience. There is already a girl waiting to use the computer. I'll get typing when I return home.

Harry Potter

At the end of the book, Harry transcends the traditional limitations of magic in his final confrontation with Voldemort. In an uncontrollable burst of power and emotion, he ignites the atmosphere and triggers the rapture. All the witches, wizards, and magical creatures are left behind to burn for their pagan beliefs. Then Vernon Dursley gives a sagacious speech about drills and the folly of sin to satisfy critics on the religious right.

That's the sort of thing you might say if you wanted to anger the long lines of fans waiting to pick up their pre-ordered copies last night. There were people with sharpie forehead scars all over the streets, and a few in full wizard or witch regalia. The funny thing to me was that in a town full of ancient stone churches and colleges, they didn't look particularly out of place. I consider that one of Oxford's selling points.

Myself, I'll be waiting a week to read the copy waiting for me at home. Fake spoilers only, please.

School's Out

I've been silent for the past week because I've been laboring over a pair of essays and some history studying. You didn't miss much.

Now that all my assignments are completed and handed in, I'm slowly coming to grips with the idea that I have no responsibilities. I'm told this depresses some people, but those people must not have a croquet tournament, banquet, and trip to Ireland to look forward to.

I'm flying over to a town called Killarney and staying for a week to enjoy the lakes and mountains and unbounded awesome. It's a bit like Switzerland, but on the cheap and in the English. As a bonus, it's famous for the sort of walking and biking tours I intend to do. My hostel promises free internet access, so I'll probably manage to write in often. The photo is obviously not my own, but I'll take plenty when I get there.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a stress relieving croquet victory to attend to.

Wicked in London

Last weekend I had my first chance to walk around London, but that portion of my visit wasn't really that great. I saw the parliament building, big ben, and Buckingham palace, but I didn't care enough to take pictures. Why should I waste my time when you can find tons of them in a Google image search? I care very little about checking landmarks off my list; I'd much rather talk to locals or see something actively entertaining.

To that end, I decided to pay up for tickets to Wicked, a musical telling the story of the wicked witch of the west (from the Wizard of Oz of course). I could tell I was in for something good when I saw the green body paint on the fans outside the theater. The production had drummed up a cult following, and there were fans milling around with painted nails and pointy hats discussing their last few viewings.

I sat next to an Australian woman who was touring Europe. I asked her about Sydney and her travels in Switzerland, and she gave me a little information, but she wasn't really a chatterbox. She may have been too busy anticipating her second showing. Thankfully, she didn't spoil anything for me.

As nearly all my friends here will attest, the show was excellent. A few even bought the soundtrack. The only person who wasn't thrilled was a guy who had no idea it was going to be a musical. I suppose it must have been like biting into a bagel when you're expecting donut. Truly, though, it was a great bagel. For several lead actors, this was the last performance, so there was extra energy in every scene and extra fervor in the applause. I'm very glad I decided to go.

Then we drank beer on the train ride back to Oxford just to keep things classy.

Switching to English

The main reason that I'm in Oxford right now was a decision I made in the middle of spring semester. I switched my major from nuclear engineering to English. "Wow, that's a pretty drastic change. What made you decide to do that?" Everybody uses that same exact sentence structure, and most of the same words in their reaction. Here's the best reply I've produced to date.

I began to build momentum for my switch while zoned out at my Progress Energy internship. I was in a nasty situation where the work was so dull and mindless that it dragged me down to its level. After a week, you'd think I was operating at maximum capacity because I was asking dumb questions and failing to read instructions. I hated it, because I don't like to be dumb and mindless for extended periods of time. What was worse, though, was that my veteran co-workers hadn't exactly found workplace bliss either. Nobody was really appreciative of anybody else's talent, but instead thankful for other people's willingness to trudge through unpleasant tasks. I began to wonder whether engineering was really for me, which raised a lot of questions.

Ever since middle school, everybody has assumed that I would go into science and engineering; myself included. When you're good at math and critical thinking, that's just what you do, right? I went along assuming that math and science were going to be the bread and butter of my future career, and I was perfectly happy with that. My insights were always useful and appreciated, and I was generally a big fish in a small pond. I took geometry in 8th grade, and I only had three classmates. It was easy to be uniquely talented, and that's the way I liked it.

After middle school, I proceeded to take my affiliation with math and science and run with it for longer than I should have. I never really found occasion to revisit my reasons for marching ahead toward an engineering career until I showed up at that desk in the oppressively boring Progress Energy office. I was getting a very handsome paycheck, but I had to quit. Some people will say that it's naive to expect work to be pleasant all the time, but you can't pay me to underemploy myself in a downward spiral of morass, stupidity, and depression.

My major revelation was understanding what it was that I would accept payment for. Fundamentally, you can pay me to work hard on something that depends on my unique creative input. Sure, it's probably possible to get paid for that within an engineering field, but it's hit or miss, and usually only comes after you've climbed the ladder a little. I really don't want to deal with that at all, so I decided to steer well clear of generic skillsets. That's why I switched my major from nuclear engineering to English with a creative writing concentration.

Granted, I had my mid-life crisis sooner than most, but I still wish it had come sooner. I've taken a number of laborious courses that are useless to me now, and I'm not entirely certain that I will graduate on time. It's bothersome, but I can cope with it. At least I don't need to worry about feeding myself or anybody else at the moment. Pending good job prospects, and indeed the success of my entire life, this has been a good idea.

Internet!

When you finally manage to carve some free time out of your busy life, is there one activity you think you deserve? Something you feel compelled to do, and use to measure your leisure? Maybe you look forward to it as a reward for a tiring day. For some people, the activity is shopping and spending hard-earned money. For others, it's a night out at the bar. Others prefer television. I'm exactly the same, but my activity is reading the internet.

When I have a moment void of immediate responsibility, I feel like I'm putting it to waste if I'm not on the internet. Doing anything else would be to deny myself what I'm owed. Catching up on sleep is an inferior option. Working on a long-term project is overly anxious, and I can procrastinate with confidence and pride. Better make it internet.

The basis of my habit is the promise of novelty and the permanence of my interaction with the news. In real life, it's two steps forward and one step back when things fall on inattentive ears or slip from memory. On the internet, I have supreme traction, and it's always full speed ahead. Topics become subtle and refined, and the people discussing them become experts. Anybody can be a respected analyst at the forefront of their field. If it's a social website, you can build up your persona with meticulous care and wisdom. You can accomplish all these things, but they are serialized and dependent on the ever-important update.

I'll click one of my links, and maybe there will be something new revealed about an upcoming videogame. Maybe one of my friends will have added to a continuing conversation. Maybe there's something in my inbox for me to consume. I anticipate these things, and check for them greedily, particularly when I have been away for long enough to expect a hearty crop. Occasionally I'll check something repeatedly without thinking about it, even though a new update is absurdly unlikely.

Is this an addiction? Not in any special way; no more so than your shopping and television and beer. I should not make an appearance on 60 minutes. I only spend too much time reading and analyzing and practicing my humor and rhetoric. It releases chemicals in my brain, but so does everything else in life, so I hesitate to label my internet use an addiction. However, I've become unhappy with the way my habit restricts me and imposes upon my work and sleep. Compulsive enjoyment has a way of becoming less enjoyable over time. Recently I meditated and decided to go to sleep very early rather than staying on the internet, and I felt incredibly liberated. I'll see if I can cultivate that feeling, but I can't promise anything.

In my next post I will discuss another example of how habits and goals can become very negative when they go unchanged, unquestioned, and unaudited for too long. I recently switched from majoring in nuclear engineering to majoring in English, and everybody always wants an explanation, so it's time to write up a good one. Hopefully you will not check the blog compulsively in the meantime.

The Living Situation

We are staying at Somerville College, which is a small campus that falls under the Oxford administrative umbrella. It was once a women's college, and it was the first Oxford University college to be non-denominational. The buildings are a mix of new and old construction that would not fit together without the help of some perplexing stairwells and hallways. It can be confusing at times, but Somerville is a very comfortable place to live.

My room is huge, and I have it all to myself. The only thing it's missing is a sink, but they have two half-way down the hall that I can use with little competition. The cleaning staff vacuum, take out the trash, and change the sheets regularly. I wish they would have the good manners to do my laundry for me too, but that's England for you.

Almost all our meals are provided at this fancy dining hall. The food is excellent for a cafeteria, and they always have cereal and baked potatoes to fall back on if the main courses get too crazy. The long tables are good for slowing the formation of cliques. The raised area at the very back is where professors and administrative staff eat food from their own special lunch line. Theirs is cafeteria experience of great dignity and priviledge.

The grounds are beautiful, and there's a particular patch of grass that's great for croquet.

Religion in Politics

I've been told that in England and in other western european nations, it is laughable to bring up one's personal beliefs in a political debate. They simply don't belong in matters concerning the general public. I was shocked, not by the sentiment, but by my own willingness to tolerate the practice in America. I have always been annoyed when politicians wave their religious convictions like a flag to bypass intelligent discourse, but somehow I had never come to terms with how fundamentally ridiculous it was.

I think America's permissivity has something to do with the confusion of religion and morality. Most people I've spoken to back home tend to think that the two concepts are inseparable and nearly synonymous. If you take that for granted, there's a case to be made for using religon to reassure voters of one's morality, and for informing certain policy decisions. Fortunately, though, we don't need to rely on such divisive sources of moral decision-making. Religion is not morality, it is a very persuasive extrapolation of morality that is quite separate from its source. For that reason it's vulnerable to irrelevance and abuse, and is quite unsuitable for use in politics when simple conscience and history will do. Simple morality with no strings attached.

As long as I live in a country that tolerates and even encourages religion in politics, I worry that I'll need to fight a tiring battle across dogmatic flypaper before any meaningful issue comes up for discussion. When restricted by the nation's short attention span, it will probably be rare to arrive at all. I'd hate to give up on America because it's been pretty good to me so far, and has generally been a powerful progressive force in the world, but I'm concerned about our ability to be a good leader in the future if this situation continues. I might leave for greener and more secular pastures later in life.

Comments Now Open

At the end of every one of my posts is a link where you can add a comment. I just now realized that the default setting was to allow only google and blogger members to submit comments, and that's not what I intended. If you have ever wanted to comment or if the mood strikes you in the future, you can now write in without any hassle.

English Breakfast: a Progression

England and several other of the countries in the UK have come to consensus on what ought to be served for breakfast. The meal is highly modular, so different components can be substituted in and out, but the general list is as follows:

• 1 Egg, sunny side up
  
• (Canadian) bacon
• 1 Bland sausage
• Baked beans
• Hash browns (highly unpredictable)
• Toast (cracking good)
  
• Cooked tomatoes (nasty)
  
• Mushrooms

On my trip to Edinburgh last weekend, which I will cover in full detail in a future update, I was treated to a lovely spectrum of English breakfasts in ascending order of quality.

Breakfast 1: Bus Station Blues
Though all my fellow students bound for Edinburgh took the train, I got stuck relying on the British bus system for no good reason. You see, after a refreshing jog to the train station, probably through the rain, I ambled up to the ticket window. Behind a thick glass window is a soft spoken old man with a thick accent and a strong distaste for speaking into the microphone at his elbow. He prefers not to give useful feedback about requests and is not disposed toward problem solving. He has never heard of the 12 hour clock and seems fairly confused and offended by the concept. I was told in error that the train I wanted was booked.

The consequence: I find myself friendless at a terribly small and dirty bus station at midnight. My connecting bus arrived in an hour, and I was struggling to stay awake, so I decided to order myself a hearty meal. You can't see the whole thing because this photograph was motivated by feelings of violent regret. This is the bottom rung on the ladder of English breakfasts, and it probably cost me the most money. The free market doesn't work too well at run-down bus stations in the middle of nowhere.

Breakfast 2: Dauntless
At 8:00 in the morning, I stumbled off the bus with about four hours of sleep to my name. I found a map and made a lovely girl point out Cockburn street for me. Then I tried to keep said map out of the rain as I navigated off to find my friends. I had the address to the wrong hostel, but I helped a nice lady move her cart, and she pointed me in the right direction. I was hoping to be rewarded with magic gauntlets or a treasure map or something, because that's how it works in videogames, but I'll take what I can get.

Successfully reunited, it's time for breakfast. English breakfast! I bashed through a giant wall of operant conditioning and ordered one up. When this warm and slightly blurry plate was set down in front of me, I felt my hope rekindled. Indeed, the meal wasn't half bad, and that soupy baked bean goodness really hit the spot. This breakfast ranks a thankful intermediate.

Breakfast 3: Haggis Heroes
The third breakfast came with a side of expeditionary bravado. Not only did it come with haggis, but the meal was the preamble to my spontaneous mountain climbing plan. While touring a castle the day prior, I saw a really cool hill-mountain-thing off in the distance, and declared that I was going to walk to it and then climb on top of it. I captured the imaginations of two others, and this grand adventure was set in stone. Time for a breakfast of champions. Better make it an English breakfast.

I tried the haggis because I'm not "a total 100% coward- wuss- pantywaist- mollycoddle- scaredy cat." Wilton says that's what I'd be if I didn't, and I can't help but agree. Now, this meal was just excellent. Look at that presentation! Delicious tater-tot style hash browns! I actually enjoyed the haggis! This was glory on a plate, my friends, and it prepared me well for the task ahead, but that's a story for another day. English breakfast is permanently redeemed.*

*Except the cooked tomatoes. Preposterous.

Wimbledon

This entry is pretty belated, principally because I took very few of my own pictures, and have been waiting for others to upload theirs to facebook. I may have to modify that policy if I want to keep this thing prompt and current. Anyhow, I went on a day trip to the tennis tournament at Wimbledon last Friday (6/29). It was a wonderful exercise in impulsive and barely planned travel in a foreign country. Here's a hint: don't guess at which tube stop you want when you can ask a local. I'm proud to say that the whole thing went off without a hitch, and we got to see some quality tennis.

Hold on, not so fast. First I need to take you through the queue. Waiting in a queue is the British equivalent of waiting in line except for a few important distinctions. FREE STICKERS! Lots of stickers; I am the proud owner of eight. There were also queue concessions and queue attendants, all there to help me enjoy my two hour wait. Now, here's a brief lesson in free sticker economics. I had plenty of time to ponder this. When you print an absurd number of stickers and give your queue attendants quotas for handing them out, the market becomes flooded and the emotional value of the sticker plummets. In an ideal free sticker economy, recipients will guard their stickers jealously and wear them with glowing pride. However, in this sordid situation, these poor stickers had clearly become worth less than the paper they were printed on. Massive inflation had led people to treat this currency of joy as a sort of crude wallpapering material. It was more than one portable guardrail that fell prey to the sticky suffocating creep of queue stickers. It was horrible.

Oh right, Wimbledon. It's a pretty impressive tennis complex that seems to hold grass courts exclusively. There's a raft of simple, mid-to-low attendance courts surrounding the giant stadium housing "centre court." We never paid our way into the main event, but we did get to see Martina Hingis suffer a decisive loss. Somehow I was struck by the prominence of the female tennis players' patella tendons, and now I'm wondering whether my ability to focus on something like that is a tally against my masculinity. The opportunity cost of my gaze in this instance was staggering. It's true though, those things were huge.

Then we ate cups of strawberries and cream, for which Wimbledon is understandably famous, and enjoyed some decent pizza. Great strawberries.

Smokefree by Hook or Crook

England has socialized healthcare in the form of the National Health Service, or NHS. As a result, when you get lung cancer from your lifelong smoking habit, taxpayers get the bill for your treatment. One way to take strain off the system and lower taxes would be to outlaw smoking and other forms of tobacco. That seems a bit overbearing, though, so England is just going to make it really, really inconvenient to smoke and hope that people quit out of frustration (really, really expensive didn't cut it).

"On July 1st 2007, England introduced a new law to make virtually all enclosed public places and workplaces in England smokefree. A smokefree England ensures a healthier environment, so everyone can socialise, relax, travel, shop and work free from secondhand smoke."

Basically you can only smoke on the street. Two of my classmates here are heavy smokers, and they intend to quit today. They're going cold turkey, except for a few bummed cigarettes when the cravings get too tough. I realize that's not really cold turkey, but it sounds more macho this way, so work with them here. I hope this great nation has imposed enough annoyance to get them passively aggressively off their addiction.

I'm just poking fun though, this plan is probably the best way to improve national health without creating another blackmarket. If you can't convince children that it's ridiculously foolish to start smoking, you don't have many other options. Besides, the concerns about unpleasant second hand smoke seem pretty legitimate to me, so I don't think they're being completely underhanded about this. Kudos to the NHS.

Covet thy Coins

First, let me explain how shocking the exchange rate is over here. Every British pound is equivalent to two dollars. But that doesn't matter because a meal valued at 10 dollars in America would just cost 5 pounds, right? No, wrong, it costs 10 pounds and you're about to have 20 dollars dancing out of your bank account for the sake of a cheeseburger and fries. This is a harsh truth, and it tends to make one pinch pennies, but you've got to put the exchange rate out of your mind if you want to get the grimace off your face.

Now, moving on to loose change. In America, when I get home from an evening out where I've spent a bit of cash, I take the coins in my pocket and toss them on my desk. They accumulate there for a very long time until they take up enough space to annoy me, and then I might consider putting them in rolls and having them converted into some useful currency. In the interim period, that money is lost to me. A sandwich that costs 4.25 may as well be five dollars in the short term, because those quarters are going on the desk.

However, when you combine the exchange rate with the fact that there are some coins in regular circulation worth 2 pounds, that whole concept goes out the window. Look at that picture of the coins I've got scattered next to my laptop. What do you suppose the value is in USD? If you answered $134.24, you are way off, that's just absurd. If, however, you answered $21.10, you're right on the money, and your guesswork is commendable. Remind me to spend these, ok?

Obligatory Drinking Age Rant

I've been free to drink alcohol over here, and I've done so sparingly, but it's really going to sting when I go back home to a society that has less respect for my ability to make responsible decisions. I'd like to see the legal drinking age in the US dropped to 18 like it is here in the UK, but not just for my sake.

I think they should lower the drinking age to 18 because tons of people drink underage anyway and the law only sets up antagonism between youth and the state. There should not be a situation where breaking the law seems so obvious and righteous, especially in such close proximity to laws that matter, like the ban on drunk driving. As it stands, it is difficult for underage drinkers to make good and safe decisions without being caught, and impossible for parents to provide safe situations without contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The law pushes us into an unsafe corner that most 18-20 year-olds will gladly stand in rather than give up the beer.

Granted, some of the guys here with me are not ready to be responsible drinkers, but I'll guarantee you that they won't have changed a bit by the time they're 21, and probably not by the time they're 31 either.

Sheep and Religion

Yesterday the group took a bus to Wells, and then to Avebury. The trip provided a nice contrast of scenery, lifestyle, and religion. In Wells you've got a gigantic catholic cathedral whose laborious intricacy tell a story of fervor and economic power. Avebury could only boast grassy rolling hills, wandering flocks of sheep, and the odd Wiccan ritual.

The cathedral sits on a big square of grass that was made completely flat and uniform, perhaps to contrast with the incredible detail of the masonry. The focus is not on nature, but on the domination of natural forces, even gravity, in the name of God. The structure is so heavy and ornate that some of its support pillars began to sink, and it had to be reinforced by the "scissor arches" in the nave. Its only failure to bend nature it its will is the prominent pre-copernican clock which sends the sun slowly around the earth--as far as I know, this concept has not yet been imposed on the solar system. The cathedral is surrounded by a town with an assortment of shops and businesses, a market, and a Starbucks (I only saw one, but there could be more).

Avebury was a completely different experience. I noticed only after I had a moment to relax my attention from the minefield of sheep poop that this place was indeed cooler than Stonehenge. It has huge circles of stones with all the same ancient mystery, but none of the unfortunate attributes of the tourist trap that Stonehenge has allegedly become. What's more, the field of sheep poop came complete with the fuzzy white culprits. A few of my classmates decided it was imperative that they go sneak up on a sheep and touch it, but the rest of us wound our way out to find fresher sights and fairer grounds. I was impressed by the way that the hills just cried out for free roaming exploration, and I was pretty bummed out when I saw fences dividing the land into private properties and denying my impulse. We paused a moment to watch the local children make prudes of all of us with a festive poo flinging fight, and then finally got to the main event: people in funny clothes standing around near a rock and looking very solemn.

When I walked up and asked for information from what looked like a semi-involved bystander (untamed hair, smoking something), he informed me that I was seeing a Wiccan wedding. Fascinating, thought I. If you want to know about Wiccans, look them up on wikipedia. To put the scene succinctly, most of them looked and acted like they came away from Lord of the Rings with a literalist interpretation. However, from what one woman explained to me about Wiccan beliefs, the whole deal sounded just as legitimate as the big ol' cathedral I had just come from. The Earth is alive with spiritual energy and prehistoric rocks are neato, all that good stuff. To be perfectly fair, Catholics wear funny clothes too; they just have a bigger budget.

I don't really mean to denigrate either religion, but I would like to point out that if you think Catholicism is more reasonable and dignified than the Wiccan religion, you are probably operating on some unfair bias. You'd be a fool to think that extremely useful and optimistic ideas can be verified by popularity alone, as they tend to be very catchy, so what's left for distinction?

Tower Shots

The group climbed up this tower today, and I took some pictures from the top. I've modified the color curve pretty substantially in most of these to brighten them without losing contrast. Essentially I have narrowed the gap between the brightness of the sky and the brightness of everything else.