…on belonging

I always wanted to belong to Edinburgh. As a child, when visiting the city, I felt its presence. I still do. It’s a city you look up to. And not just in the way your eyes look up when walking through the cobbled closes of the Old Town with their precipitous faces. It felt defensive. Resilient. Like its castle. These sheer walls stared back blankly as I tried to peer into their tiny windows. I could feel its aura through the thick weathered stone, its deep darkness defiant, but I could not touch it. Could not put my finger on its hurt. I wanted to make it better – these windows and their shadows had seen enough. But still, I was shut out. Their long-gone ports locked. Intuitively, I understood. Many of these buildings were like me. They would grit their teeth and get on with it alone. Whatever it was.

 

A lady, in her late seventies or eighties with shoulder-length grey hair and a beret.

Dark, flared tweed skirt and long knitted jacket, opaque tights, sensible shoes. House of Bruar. Pale skin. She carries an elegant but practical stick, carefully selected,

leaning forward with her upper body as if impatient for the next thing and strides

through Moray Place Gardens.

 

She has done this many times although I don’t know her. I have never seen her

before. Her sense of purpose palpable. She belongs here in a way I would like to

belong somewhere. Fits the gardens with their mature trees, perennials and

manicured borders. Tidy. She has such a sense of place - of self - imbued in her

movement that she can find belonging wherever she goes. I want to intrude. Ask her

how. She unlocks the gate and is gone.

 

I’m back in the New Town, in the centre of it all, but I have not yet been subsumed. The symmetrical wide avenues are lined with beautiful neo-classical homes full of light and room to breathe. They were designed with Enlightenment ideals: to encourage debate, to bring people together, have dinner parties and share new ideas. It was a place to talk. To impress.

 

Yet, there is a discomforting contrast between the warmth emanating from the elegant sash windows spilling out onto the street, the rippling reflections bathed in fading burnt orange dissipating into the shadows as you walk through wet in winter, and the froideur of these imposing New Town buildings with their fanlights and Doric colonnades. Much of the city is by invitation only.

 

A young woman with long auburn hair and white trainers walks slowly across Moray Place.

She peers in through a sash window with drawn-back thickly lined cream silk curtains offering a passing upward glimpse of pleated lampshades oozing warm light, a vase brimming with honesty and freesias and foliage, a fireplace - the finishing touch to the perfectly proportioned high-ceilinged room complete with ornate cornicing, oversized mirror and pictures of happy children smiling straight at you framed on the richly wallpapered half-panelled walls. She looks down, pushing her hair away from her face with her hand, and wanders on.

 

And there are many invitations. Charity balls, dinners, coffee mornings, book-tennis-golf-and private membership clubs create coveted enclaves of community. Places to enjoy status and shared interest. Schools where parents vie for parking Range Rovers and BMWs, yet huddle in gossiping groups at the gate; the Sweaty-Betty-mums waiting for children dressed in uniform and plaits and pulled-up-socks and shorts and Barbour jackets over blazers and matching jumpers. Happy to share the unwritten understanding - and relief - of finding parameters of belonging; uniforms and fashion choices make fitting-in easier. Some happy hanging back checking their phones, fussing young children or watching life unfold before them.

 

Edinburgh whispers ripple loudly through the grand marquee, a go-Forth of white tablecloths and coloured bottles and candelabras and flickering lights and tall glasses and small glasses and little Chanel handbags – ladies in expensive dresses and Louboutin shoes keen to be the first to flap about the fantastic money she bid to lunch with Ian Rankin and Jack Vettriano.  It is announced there is not just one bid but two – two lunches quickly arranged to satisfy the demands of the ladies who-don’t-just-lunch. Exclusivity is elusive. Her eyebrows, impossibly arched, as if shocked. Disciplined, like her regime of tennis, Pilates, hot yoga and plain, old-fashioned calorie-deficit.  High on champagne and happy to schmooze with the great and the good and doing their bit, girlfriends danced as Brian Ferry crooned and waiters came and went in waves like a skein of white-fronted geese flocking to the wetlands to feast.

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I like the way things feel when they belong. The texture of something, the slight change in hue from reflected light as it distorts the colour of the walls in the mirror, the wafting of familiar smells from the kitchen and how they work together to tease this feeling from its hiding, until there is a shift in sensibilities. A lamp, a mirror, a plant in the corner, a family heirloom, pictures of loved ones, curated to create balance. And you move them around this way and that until the tension in the air slackens, until there is a stillness that is settling. Until these things slowly start to map themselves, subliminally, on your psyche, mirroring and shadowing. Your hand holds the hands of others who turned this same handle, the past and present forged with no fuss; their sum of parts in terms of colour, shape and form somehow equating to who you are now. This is you. This is the rhythm that slowly falls into step with your heart. When you feel a belonging. And once you have a sense of it, you can sit and lose yourself in its stillness with no self-consciousness. You can gaze inwards and outwards in this safe place without awkwardness. It’s the same with people.

 

A couple sit on the grass in Princes Street Gardens. I only notice their stillness. Yet they move. They slip and slide off each other like slow-cooked-lamb off a spoon.

 

Think of the stillness at the top of the breath before exhaling slowly: the stillness of the hunted in the game of Hide and Seek when the seeker is close enough to sense an essence of breath; the stillness as you lie afraid, half-asleep, animal-like, in the middle of the night listening. They belonged, not yet ready to be picked apart.

 

Yet, when the balance tips, belonging can become restless. You look around with fresh eyes and notice wear and tear, tiny fractures, cracks.  As if these things have been rearranged too many times to make room for other things in your life. It has become crowded. The familiar beat disturbed: like polyrhythms failing to realign, a deceptive cadence, a stubborn counterpoint eluding the contrapuntal. Discord and chaos ensues.