scattered thoughts (induced by scotland)

a bunch of random musings brought upon by a trip to the sottish countryside with my coworkers

It is a Thursday afternoon and instead of sitting in an office I am sitting in a sprinter van, among a handful of my coworkers, some who I know as friends, others who I only know in brief intervals of passing — mutually filling morning mugs of coffee, working from opposite sides of the same room, familiar faces without names — as we make our way to a tiny beachside town in the Scottish countryside called Saddell, a place we will collectively call ‘home’ for the next four days. It is hour three and a half of the four hour journey, my headphones are off, the road is winding, and I have just finished watching The Iron Claw — why I did not research how tragic this movie is prior to downloading it for a car ride with colleagues, I do not know — but I am thinking about a lot of things between the tears I am withholding. About my brothers, about my family, about the days ahead. I shift my glossy gaze from my dusty screen to an ocean and its crashing waves and eight picturesque, pastel coloured houses arranged in a neat row of pinks and purples and yellows, and then I notice the raindrops scattered across the window, and all of the sudden I cannot focus on anything else. 

When I was young, a lot of my time was spent in the car, usually with my mom and my little brother, Tanner. Tanner is two years younger than me, 11 inches taller than me, we have historically been told we look like twins, probably because we have hazel eyes and matching dimples, but for now all there is to know about Tanner is that he and I were our mom’s designated errand-running-children. Likely because we were younger and therefore willing to accompany her to the grocery store, or to a haircut, or to a Filipino party — or because we were younger and therefore devoid of choice — and sitting in a car with one another gave us all sorts of opportunities to find imaginative ways to entertain ourselves buckled up in the back seat. Me on the right, Tanner on the left, two hot chocolates with whipped cream in the middle compartment cup holders. I remember, whenever it would rain, I would look out the window and pretend that the raindrops were in a race to see which one could make it from the left side to the right side the quickest; one drop getting pulled by the wind to another, slowly passing the microscopic baton and then all at once combining forces and rushing to the finish line before the new sets of raindrops entered the relay. Another classic was the ABC game. You look outside the car at street signs, license plates, bumper stickers, establishments, anything with text plastered across its front, and whoever can get through the alphabet first wins. No repeat words allowed. A wonderful way to pass the time and to pay attention to one’s surroundings. “Exit” was always the easiest “E,” as was “Interstate” for “I,” X-tra trucks were the only way to find an “X,” and whoever spotted one first was usually always guaranteed to win the game. The prize was nothing more than the pride of saying you won the ABC game, but it is one of those things that very quickly induces a competitive edge, even if you claim you are not a competitive person. One time my dad purposefully pulled over to a nearby taco truck so he could use “Quesadilla” — or Quesidilia, as he calls them — as his “Q.” There was also the close your eyes on the way home and guess when we are turning into our neighbourhood based solely on the movement of the car game, where our mom would sometimes catch on and play along, taking an intentional wrong turn or braking a house early. I am always fascinated by children and their imaginations, and it makes me sad that a time comes in our lives where we are sitting in the car and the raindrops racing across the window or the signs hanging above the freeway become nothing more than what they are: raindrops on a window and signs on a freeway.

In August, I heard a song that contained a succession of guitar sounds that unburied yet another car activity formed by the creative genius that is Tanner and me. I have no idea how to explain this in a way that will make sense to anyone but us, one of the magical things about a core memory, but one of us would be the guitar — singing these three specific chords — and the other would sing a story about themselves with a country twang. It has been over a decade since remembering that song, and I sent a text to Tanner out of the blue asking if he remembered it, too. And he most certainly did, calming my fear that I am living inside of my own head, ruminating on and cherishing memories with people so deeply, while the people in question fail to remember the moments at all.

Last summer, I flew home for my dad’s 60th birthday, one of the two times throughout the year I would return from England to California see my family. As a part of the festivities, we went white water rafting, which began not in an inflatable boat, but on a four hour drive at 4:30 in the morning, followed by a day of rowing and baking in the sun, completed with a four hour return sat in rush hour traffic. On the way home, I hopped in the car with my partner Nielsan, and Tanner, and one of my other brothers, Sidney. At some point down the line, we exhausted ourselves of the ABC game — one started by Tanner when he pointed out an A, B, and C within seconds of each other — and we found ourselves in a state of reminiscing. Tanner brought up the swing set and the “Together Forever” song — a relic from the furthest corner of my brain that I nearly forgot existed — Sid told a story about a journey home from Tahoe which involved Game Cubes, garlic bread, and car sickness, and I cannot remember any other details of the story but what I can remember is that me, Tanner, and Nielsan were laughing so hard we nearly had to pull over because of how hilarious Sid’s delivery was. Sid is a man of few words, and on that car ride the three of us talked more than we ever had in a very long time; maybe even in our whole lives. The closer we approached our exit, the more I wanted the car ride to last forever, because as we pulled into our driveway, each of us had realised that this was one of the only times the three of us would be together for a very long time; me living in London, Sidney and Tanner living in California, none of us very frequent on text. It is a weird feeling being in a car with your older brother and your little brother, reminiscing on the shared-but-individual experience of growing up, and realising that those were the only years you were ever going to have together, in that capacity. The “Together Forever” song, the ghost game, Disney Party, DIY Legends Of The Hidden Temple in our garage, the water balloon fights, Christmas at the Calls, Sid singing “Still Alive” on Rock Band, playing Animal Crossing and being annoyed that Sid always got to be the number one villager with a gold statue, the thunderstorm in the Cameo home, our scary babysitter, the rats in the house, walking in on Sid and Jaymi learning the Soulja Boy dance, Insert Other Random Memories Here.  

One of the paradoxical realisations brought upon by the development of my frontal lobe, and by the movie My Old Ass, is that the passage of time is life’s greatest gift, but equally its greatest curse, and by that I mean I spent much of my teenage years either locked away in my bedroom or out of the house with my friends, and then all of the sudden I am 26 and living in another country, sitting in a bedroom in an old Scottish farmhouse that I am nearly positive is haunted, wishing I could go back in time and urge my past self to appreciate her family a little bit more. Because when she visits home, she realises how all of us are getting older, and just how quickly time passes*, and what she would give to experience more car rides with her brothers, preferably with all three. There are times in my life where I wish I could freeze the moment and remember every detail of it so I can re-live it again and again and again, and the car ride with Tanner and Sid is one of them. 

*more like this here

It is quite a strange thing, to turn 22, move across the world, only to find yourself sitting in a colonial dining room lined with 11 taxidermy deer heads — Boar On The Floor style — reflecting on your relationship with your brothers. You are examining a pair of antlers, thinking about how your siblings have seen you at your worst, at your best, and at every phase in between and I think because you are related it makes it easy to forget that with a sibling comes a certain type of love through witnessing the growth of one other over the decades. We would likely fail to explain to each other what we all do for work — I know Tanner works at a construction company and Jaymi does real estate and Sid does something with numbers for a bank(?) — but what I am certain of is that Jaymi likes mint chip ice-cream, specifically the one from Baskin Robbins because it has shavings of chocolate as opposed to chips, and that he has a soft spot for animals — if he sees a struggling bee, he will stop in his tracks to find a water bottle cap and some sugar to save it — and I could also tell you that Tanner sometimes walks with his toes down first then his heel, because when you grow up attending each and every one of his soccer games you eventually come to observe the way he walks, and I could even recount what time of the day and how Sidney makes his iced coffee when he works from home (3-4PM, with the tall plastic cup from Starbucks and the green straw, with his homemade cold brew and the mocha mix from Safeway on the right side of the fridge door). I know my brothers, and my brothers know me.

With growing up in a house of six, seven, and at one point eight other people comes a certain kind of safety and comfort in the knowledge that there are others around you, even if they are hidden behind a closed door, tucked away in their worlds. This must be why I like busy cities; the comfort of knowing someone else is there, even if it is a stranger on the tube, an exchange of smiles with a passerby, a flat with its lights turned on when it is dark out. It has been over three years since I have lived with my family, and this weekend I am staying in a larger than life house with 20 other people; some work friends, some artists-affiliated-with-my-work-turned-friends, and I have been greeted with reminders of how nice it is to be surrounded by sounds from afar in a house full of people: laughter caused by trivial arguments during a Scrabble game, the mumbling hymns of those focused on a near-impossible 1000 piece puzzle, music being made behind closed doors, the sizzling and clamour of a meal being cooked, clinking of wine glasses and the twisting of bottle caps, the harmonies of life occupying every hallway and every room. 

One of the greatest gifts I ever received from my ex was the teachings of a card game called Pounce. It can best be described as “intense solitaire,” where you are playing three games at once — same suits, same color building up in the middle of the table, alternating suits, alternating colors building down in your corner of the table, a pile of 13 cards to the left deciding the start and end of the game — and the feeling of learning and understanding Pounce is akin to an addiction of sorts. I am not joking when I write this. When my ex taught me and our mutual friend how to play Pounce, we couldn’t stop. Genuinely. We were always asking to play, and when we weren’t playing with each other, we were playing online. A year later, I taught it to my family; they couldn’t stop. In June, I taught it to my old flatmates; it resulted in hours long games in the living room and our ongoing group chat called “pounce club.” This weekend, I taught some of my coworkers how to play; we ended up playing for two hours straight. “This game is amazing,” said George. “I’m totally going to teach this to my family.”

Afterwards, I thought about how beautiful it is, that we are all mosaics of one another, passing along little bits and pieces and idiosyncrasies of ourselves, allowing them to be claimed and reclaimed by those around us, and those around them. I think about how my handwriting is a mixture of cursive and non-cursive characters because as a child, I would admire my cousin Prudence’s handwriting in all its loops and curves, I think about how I wear cowboy boots because my Papa wore cowboy boots, I think about how, last week, I realised that Nielsan and I have all of the same exact eight pairs of shoes, and I think about how my best friends and I adopt words from each other until they have been integrated into a language of our own. I think about the letters I received as a child, sent every week from my Great Grandma written on yellow office paper, which ignited a love of my own for handwritten letters, and I think about how, as I type this, I am wearing a sweatshirt with the sleeves cuffed because my college roommate Anni used to cuff her sleeves and I loved how she looked. I think about how I am wearing a colorful knit beanie because I saw a girl on the street wearing a colorful knit beanie a few winters ago, I think about how I like making conversation with strangers because it is exactly what my dad likes to do, and I think about how a friend loaned me an annotated book, and now I cannot read a book without a pen in reach. I wonder what mosaics I have imprinted on the people around me, whether a friend or a stranger passing by: a way of writing the letter “J,” a cuffed sleeve, a loaned book, a card game.

I am currently sitting on the five and a half hour long train ride home, a golden sun on its way to set into the Lake District to my right, the laughter of Kwes and Saskia from behind, a sleepy, pink-haired Gwynnie to my front, Beth typing away to the left, thinking about how I woke up yesterday and thought to myself, “Yeah, this was cool, but I think I could go home now” and how I drifted into sleep later that night thinking, “Today was so much fun, I’m really glad I stayed.” I started my Sunday with a 7.7 kilometre hike with a handful of people, getting to know each other outside of the context of meetings and work projects, talking about things like Spanish cider recommendations and the differences between sci-fi and fantasy and what categories Dr. Who and Dune fall into, and classic cars and being Dutch and our worst breakups, wandering through a wet and muddy and green and mossy trail, ascending into the misty hills of Saddell until our view of the cabin was reduced to a tiny dot. When we arrived back to the house, we played none other than the aforementioned two hour game of Pounce, had some tea, attempted a game of Scrabble before realising we were game-d out and before I realised that I am Very Bad at Scrabble, and then I remembered that before the hike, I volunteered to assist with cooking dinner, and so I headed to the kitchen. 

What I did realise on Sunday was that me, Jodie, and George had agreed to cook a meal for 20 people. What I did not realise on Sunday was that me, Jodie, and George had agreed to cook an entire crate of fresh lobsters that were now rock solid frozen, with little to no knowledge on how to cook a lobster (sans Jodie thanks to her experience working at Brat) ((not the album, the restaurant)), and I will not bore you with my in-depth knowledge on how to cook and de-shell a lobster from frozen, but what I will divulge is that nothing bonds three people together quite like the act of cooking a meal and serving it to a table of 20 hungry people, newfound friends forever bound by a trip to Saddell. Maybe it is because of the glasses of orange wine and Scottish whiskey, maybe it is because it was our fourth day in a row of existing together, but there were multiple moments between staring at a crate of 15 lobsters and wondering what the fuck to do with them and serving out plates of Pasta á la Lobster followed by STP (sticky toffee pudding) where we were laughing so hard, I was in tears and declaring that my stomach hurt, which is when you know I am genuinely laughing very, extremely hard. Much like the guitar chords and the song between Tanner and I, this is another one of those times that words would fail to convey just how hilarious the moment was. Another memory only ours to share.

One of my favorite things that this world has to offer is laughing until my stomach hurts, because it is in those moments that I am truly letting myself be myself around someone, fully and wholly, which is sometimes difficult for me to do. I am the kind of person who is always worrying about how they appear to other people; when I eat I am worried I have food stuck in my teeth, when I speak and I stutter I am worried that someone caught onto it, when I am at work I routinely go to the bathroom mirror to make sure my hair looks okay, and when it doesn’t it is all I can focus on. As I approached this impromptu weekend away — I had initially declined before I was politely coerced into saying “yes” by Sian — I was already nervous to be surrounded by people who were used to seeing me dressed in my nice work clothes, hair curled, face painted, in a state quite the opposite: one of linty leggings, stained sweatshirts, and undone hair, but by the time I was wrestling a boiled lobster 24 hours ago to the T, the state of my appearance was the least of the worries. I was grateful for the present moment, where I was uncontrollably laughing with Jodie and George, thinking about nothing else. 

we cooked that!!! (also peep the deer)

On the topic of worrying, lately, I have caught myself concerned with things that, in the grand scheme of things, do not hold much importance. At all. I have become insecure with the way I present myself on the internet, because it seems like the algorithm no longer wants to support the things I am sharing, which has since led to multiple spirals about why I care about things like an algorithm, and an attempt at re-wiring my brain to focus on the process and to let go of the outcome (expressed in a post I wrote a month ago). Suffice to say, going to a place where my phone did not work for five days was probably a Healthy thing to do, because when I am older, and hopefully somewhat wiser, I will look back on this period of my life and remember things like the time I cooked a bunch of frozen lobsters or the time I accidentally initiated a heated argument over the word “MANGO” in a game of Scrabble, or the time we were playing Pounce and we noticed that Gwynnie was flipping through her cards one by one, and then we all stared at each other in silence before laughing hysterically, or the time I asked George if he wanted some of the STP sauce and then we broke into soundless laughter over a spoon, I am sure that when my hair is silver and I am wrinkled and wearing a mumu I will think about these moments instead of thinking about the pimple on my left cheek or the fact that I am in my internet flop era or the state of my shirt I wore last night, which is covered in the smell of seafood and desperately begging for a wash. 

In a recent episode of The Broski Report, in a tangental, relatable spiral on the internet and identity and self-compassion, much like this section of the post, Brittany Broski posed the question: what do you like? And how can you incorporate more of that into your life? I decided to use it as a journal prompt, and I wrote that I like sunsets and pink skies, baking, long convos with friends, my alone time, journalling, when I can be myself around someone, movies like Before Sunrise, wearing glitter eyeshadow every day, Valentine’s day, doodling things, ME!, dancing to good music even though I suck at dancing, the process of making something, texts that start with “this reminded me of you,” when humans give reminders that they are human (i.e. stopping to take photos of a flower), seeing cats outside, STICKERS, making things that make me happy, long, frilly skirts, the process of making something, the color pink, handwriting that is kinda cursive, kinda not, the act of getting coffee, bows, childlike wonder, singing in the shower, laughing so hard my stomach hurts, and art that is messy and full of imperfections. 

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, and it seems as if I am finding myself returning to some of these ideas today.

from my instagram story

The sun has set and it is blue outside — the kind of deep, cerulean blue where the certain silhouettes are illuminated by the moon, and it is not yet dark, but most certainly not light — and we are on hour nine of ten of travel, passing through brief interludes of civilisation between the vast stretches of fields and trees and blueness. The laughter of friends behind me continues as I look down at my hands — a nail chipped from taking on the role of a chef last night — and I turn my head towards the window, a handful of neon signs pointing towards a plaza of sorts, and I scan my eyes up and down, checking if any of words I see start with the letter “A” — and I wonder if there might be any X-tra trucks in England. 

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hellooo again, thank you to everyone who read my last post about living abroad, and thank you to everyone who has reached out about it and to those who have subscribed since (there are 300 of you !!! what the heck ! <3) it was one of my favorite things i’ve written in a long time, and i’ve been worried about how to proceed, but after spending a weekend (semi) unplugged and ~re-connecting with nature~, this was the result. it’s a bit more abstract and s c a t t e r e d compared to my other posts, probably because my brain is also very much All Over The Place atm, so please do with it what you will. i fear my train is about to arrive in london aka i must prepare for the 9:30pm journey home to nielsan and juno. until next time xxx tatum : )