Question

write a story on the topic
" the magical place "

Answer 1

had arrived in Edinburgh not knowing a single soul – except the man I came with, who was a kindred lost spirit. He never stopped being a lost spirit, which is why our four years together came to an abrupt end that resembled a car crash. Overnight, he disappeared from my life and into a new identity. I was tempted to pack up the wreckage of my Edinburgh life, bury it and put a cross on it somewhere discreet, like the top of Arthur’s Seat, then go some place completely new where nobody could guess where I came from and what I carried inside.

But my destiny was here; I knew it in my bones. I dug my heels in even deeper in Edinburgh. I stayed, all over again. But a city was not enough any more, I had too many painful memories there and I needed to feel at home in this whole country. I needed space to house my past, as well as my future. I bought a car and drove deep into the Scottish Highlands.

I plunged into a wilderness of giant shaved hills that spoke of distant devastation, and dark forests that sometimes looked indigo. I swam in lochs and walked by rivers. Sky that moved every second. The sheep were scattered like tombs. The wind had a voice I understood. The stone houses grew from the land. This was an ancient, human landscape whose imprint I already carried. Here were the changing colours of my childhood seasons. The blue line of the sea ahead, like a promise. The stoical faces of the people. This place was the northern continuation of me. Strangely, in this remote bit of the continent, everything important felt within reach: the sky, the ocean, the past, the end of Europe and the beginning, the city and the opposite of the city, the life of the mind and the life of the body. I felt geographically complete.

‘And now,’ Bowles writes, ‘as I stood in the wind looking at the mountains ahead, it was as if I were drawing close to the solution of an as-yet unposed problem. I was incredibly happy as I watched the wall of mountains slowly take on substance, but I let the happiness wash over me and asked no questions.’

I had already spent a lifetime asking those questions. Now, I had an answer.

These days I live in the Highlands with someone who is deeply rooted in the place and, like the place, has the wisdom to accommodate my history. I will never stop travelling of course, because I never want to abandon the world. Just as I hope the world doesn’t abandon us if politicians with doughy faces and dated ideas have their way and Scotland breaks away from the Britain that makes it such a perfect home for the likes of us – the people who have left the fear and loathing of nationalism in the rubble of the twentieth century, and believe that borders need to open, not close, so that we can be more, not less.

That’s all very well, but what happens to the imagination when the spirit stops flickering like the needle of a broken compass? You go inwards more than you go outwards, and the nature of your enquiry changes. It’s not about where to go next, but about where you’ve been, what happened and why. I now know that the practice of internal emigration when there is clearly no need to emigrate further is simply called being a writer. And there is no cure for it. Something else I know: those who go broke searching for the magic place are homeless. What they are really looking for is home. Home not as the place you come from, but the place you reach; home as the place where you understand yourself. That is where the wisdom and the ecstasy are. The death too, one day.

Perhaps you knew this all along. Lucky you.