Dark City

A view of Edinburgh from Arthur's Seat, at twilight.

Darkness was my first impression of Edinburgh. I had been traveling—without sleep—for about thirty hours by the time my cab rolled into the city. I had no idea what time it was—late, I assumed, because the sky had the deepening quality of twilight sinking rapidly into night. The streets of the Old Town were narrow, surrounded on both sides by looming sentinel walls of brown and slate gray stone. My cab took the most obscure back roads possible to get to my flat; I did not see the open, bustling, modern Princes Street, or the white-walled and airy New Town. My introduction to Edinburgh was in the dark, ancient part of the city where cars and electricity seem like passing fads, a pretense. Underneath there will always be cobblestones and narrow dank alleys and gothic stone buildings whose foundations stretch back centuries. Edinburgh is a city that never escapes how old it is.

When I finally made it to my flat at Robertson’s Close, tucked off the Cowgate (is anyone surprised that the university houses the most number of students on a road that earned its name because it was the waste-ridden path farmers used to bring their livestock into the city for market day?) and hauled my luggage up three flights of stairs, I was a bit confused. Full darkness had descended. I was very concerned about getting something for dinner, since it was so late. My new flatmate Charoula offered to make me something to eat. She admitted later that she thought I was a little bit weird for wanting to eat so early, but she cooked up a meal for me anyway. By the time I finished eating, it was about 3:30pm. This was my first introduction to January in the far northern latitudes.

It’s a shame that most of my pictures of the city come from sunny days. I had a bad habit of pulling out my camera anytime the sun made a rare appearance. Most of the time it was cloudy, or windy, or rainy, or usually all three at once. This was the city as I knew it—the streets I walked every day from my flat to the university campus and back again, fighting to keep my umbrella right-side-in, passing bins full of shattered umbrellas that weren’t so lucky, parents pushing strollers covered in plastic sheets to keep out the damp.

I didn’t mind the weather. I gloried in my dark city. I never took it for granted. I found something new to look at every time I emerged from the dark tunnel that was Robertson’s Close out onto Nicolson Street, that loud, crowded street of shops and cafes and bookstores and bohemian students. Every time I walked Chambers Street and passed under the dignified gaze of the Scottish History museum. Every time I darted under the bridge that marked the boundary to the university proper and leapt the ever-present muddy puddle. No, I didn’t mind the weather at all.

The crags looming in the background, as seen from campus.

Edinburgh is nestled at the base of an ancient, extinct volcano called Arthur’s Seat. The sides are lined with slick black rock—the crags—that jut over the city like outer watchmen. The inner sentry is Edinburgh Castle itself, built from the same black volcanic rock. The high peaks were the perfect location for an ancient outpost, impregnable, intimidating. The castle grew out of the outpost and the city grew out of the castle. The castle was always visible, always watching, the dark shadow at the corner of my eye.

Paris is a bright city. The monuments, the bridges, the museums are predominantly white or light-colored. The streets are wide, open, inviting. We can thank Napoleon for that. Lisbon is a bright city. The walls are white and the roofs tiled burnt sienna. Dublin, Cordoba, Granada, Madrid, York, London—none of the cities I visited had that same gothic splendor.

One night in early spring Charoula was hit with the kind of cold that makes you want to curl up and die—runny nose, sore throat, muscle aches, and general misery. I volunteered to go out and get her some medicine from the shop around the corner. It was maybe 9pm when I left the flat.

The streets were eerily quiet. Sometime in the early evening a fog had descended on the city. Everywhere I looked white smoky tendrils curled around the bases of buildings, crept up lampposts, twined around the city like a cat. As I passed by the Old College building, the only detail I could make out was the gold statue that topped the domed roof cocooned in gossamer fog. All light was dimmed, blurred, pushed back. Those pesky details of modernity—the cars, the lights—were a dream from which the city was finally waking. Towering over it all was Edinburgh Castle, a cloud mountain that looked like it could detach from the earth at any moment and take flight. It was one of those moments where I fell in love with my dark city all over again.

This week’s Synchroblog topic was darkness. You can read the others here:

How Are You? I Am Fine.; From Darkness, Light; Into the Darkness; The Senior Scramble; Further; Synchroblogging in th Dark