The Ned Wood Archive

Rest your head
and read a treasured dream

You go down to the Meadows. You wait until the weather’s warm enough to dry out the grass. May at the earliest. You go down to the Jawbone and then straight out into the open, away from the walks and away from the cherry blossom that’s just coming out. You walk under the fluffy pink candy floss for a few paces and then across the meadow itself. There are folk walking along the Meadows paths, off somewhere important, no doubt, but no-one out here. You find yourself a good patch and you lie on your back and let all of your muscles relax and feel the bad vibes drain away. You spread out your arms and your legs like a star. You let your ankles and your hip bones and your shoulder blades and your wrists and elbows and the back of your skull sink into the ground. You feel your body putting down roots into the earth. You let the grass grow beneath you and buoy you up. You ignore anyone you see. You forget everything else. You let the earth soak up any doubts and fears you have. |You let them drain away, and then you soak up the positive vibes coming back from the ground beneath you.

This is the best meditation. Sometimes you go to other places. There are times when you enjoy just sitting and staring. You are not so much meditating, but sitting, looking at something, and letting your thoughts drift off. You like the botanical gardens to do that. Maybe you look at the rock garden or (if it’s cold) you sit and watch in one of the hot houses. Or you go down the Water of Leith near St Bernards. You sit doing nothing. Great for relaxing and getting your mind off what’s bothering you. Refreshing.

You know it isn’t really “meditating”. You look back on the way you used to talk about mediation and karma and stuff back in Southampton: you and Bernie and Chris Raworth, and laugh at how naive and pretentious you were. How pretentious and naive all of you were. You didn’t know what you were talking about. None of you. You thought you could just sit and look at the moon and achieve nirvana. Nowadays, you just sit and look at a few plants and achieve satisfaction. Or distraction. And that’s more than enough.

Or you go people watching. You find somewhere busy and watch folk go past. You are in the crowd but not of the crowd. You go to Princes Street Gardens, maybe, nearer the clock than the bandstand. You sit on a bench and you have people just walk past. Fascinating. One of the best places you know for doing that is Nessie flat. You sit under her James Dean poster and you watch all the crowds go up and down Lawnmarket. You could do it all day. She told you that’s why they moved out in the end. It wasn’t the noise, it was the distraction. She told you she couldn’t work so much staying there. Not when she had to study for her finals a couple of years later.

You like to find somewhere to lose yourself. You want to turn off from the now. You enjoy a really old bookshop with loads of rooms and a chair or two for you to relax in. You enjoy having so many distractions from your day-to-day life. You find a book. You sit down and you browse through it. You find another. You just switch off. You waste time.
And there was another place to meditate, only you could never find it when you wanted to. You came across it one day out walking, but next time you went searching for it, you missed the entry to it and had to give up.

It was when you were coming up the High Street past the fringe festival office just before St Giles and you went down a close on the left. It was a really twisted path, the sort you know was invented to live up to being called a wynd, and you went down passages, left turns and right turns, through wee tunnels where they’d put a building over the way and then you came to a small square, not much bigger than your bedroom in Marchmont. Four stone walls surrounded you with an arch diagonally to the left leading to another alley going down away from the quad. In the centre of the wall in front you saw a three piece Palladian window with fancy glazing bars and a pattern of stained glass across the panes. To the right are two stone benches in an L shape against the walls. You sit on the bench in front of you and, facing the way you’d come into the square, you notice a small stack of about ten rounded boulders in the corner. A simple stack of boulders, each smaller than the one below, too carefully balanced to be left to chance or the whim of any passing stranger to give the tower a nudge. You were tempted yourself. Tempted to see whether they were fixed together or mounted on a steel pole, each cobble with a hole down the centre. But the peacefulness that the stones exuded argued against any attempted destruction. You look at the small pool reflected the tower. It reinforces the argument against any interference. You sit and gaze and are soon lost in thought. The square remains quiet. No one passes through. You gaze and sit. You are left on your own for as long as you want.

Of course, you tried to go back there the following week, but couldn’t find the entry. You went round the outside of St Giles two or three times, but there aren’t any closes off that cloistered quadrangle that is Parliament Square. You checked out each of the closes leading south from the High Street but none of them led you back to where you wanted to go. You asked Nessie about it, but she didn’t know what you were talking about. Told you that you were making it all up.

You did manage to find the place again, though, three or four times in all the years that you lived up in Edinburgh, but only stumbling across it by chance, never when you were looking for it. One time, you went through the arch on the far side and, by way of more passages and tunnels ended up part way down George IV Bridge. But, you couldn’t retrace your steps from that direction either.

However, today, you are spread out on Meadows grass. You stare up at the calm blue above you. You remember the sky you saw back home that Easter. The day you went with Anna Mulcahy to find the old churches. You saw three buzzards circling above you. Three buzzards with wings spread out like they were meditating. Touching the sky and letting it soak up their doubts and fears. Round and round relaxing on the buoyant air. Letting the updrafts carry them. Graceful. Effortless. Round and round. Never the same circle. Sometimes an oval. Sometimes a figure of eight. Calm. Undisturbed. Round and round forever like the seasons of the year circling. Always the same. Always different. Gentle. Sliding across to find another current to hitch a ride on. Freeloading on the thermals.

When you were a kid and you went to the kid’s playground, you didn’t play on the slides or swings or seesaw. You played on the roundabout. The old octagonal box shaped roundabout. Like a hat. Like a cake. You could stand on the outside rim or sit on one of the slices. Painted red and yellow with the iron octopus in the middle so you could spin it using the octopus’s arms. You’d run in circles pushing it round until it was fast enough for you to jump on and ride. Round and round. You sat and relaxed as the ride gently slowed down. You were mesmerised by the last few revolutions. You watched 360 degrees of the world roll past. Each year taking longer and longer. You see the buzzards wheeling again and again in the blue.

You used to go to Silver Blades with Rosie Jones back when you were at school. Saturday mornings. You were 15, she was 14. You in your Levi Sta Prests, Rosie in her sky blue bomber. You could just about stay on your feet, both of you. Slowly moving round on the ice, just part of the crowd. They played all of the classics. Desmond Dekker, Harry J All Stars, Dave & Ansel Collins. Skating to the rhythm of the guns of Navarone. If you could call it skating. Then they clear the ice to let the experts on. Just three or four kids who aren’t actually that much better. They circle round slowly making the most of the free space, sometimes forwards, sometimes backwards, sometimes gliding, one leg stretched in the air behind them, arms spread. Not jumping, not spinning. Just slowly arcing round and round.

Your brother had that Beatles double album. The white one. You like the song at the end of side three the best. You listen to the tranquil hypnotic guitar notes. You notice the sailing organ part. You hear the chaotic drums failing to disrupt the mood. You watch the buzzards make their long, long, long orbits. You focus first on one and then on another. You see the motionless wings. You marvel at the ease with which they roam the sky. Round and round. You see the angel from Newington sailing over the path down by the Water of Leith. You see her moving through the closes up by the Mile. You see her dancing round in circles over North Bridge, slower than those waltzing fools in the wind. You watch her flowing over the Meadows more elegantly than those crazed ballet dancers pirouetting in the gale. Now I can see you, be you.

You feel the earth beneath your bones. You close your eyes and let the sun play on your eyelids. You feel your doubts and fears oozing into the ground. You sense your cares draining away. You are aware of the shadow of the old timer a fraction of a second before you hear his voice.

“Are you pished?” he asks. “Hey you. Are you pished?” He taps your foot with his boot – the most delicate of tackles. Then he decides for himself as he walks away. “He’s pished.”

It always ends this way.