1. In the town of Lincoln, my family and I walked through the North Gate, built not by the ancient Britons, or even by the even more ancient Normans, but by the Romans. The stones were so old they looked squashed and marshmallowy. An apartment was built into the top of the gate. As I stood there marveling, a man in a suit brushed past me, evidently late for work. 

This is not the man in the suit. 

2. Every year in Edinburgh, they build a temporary stadium into the old castle for the Fringe festival. Jam it right in there like a dental crown.

3. Also in Edinburgh: We walked up to Arthur’s Seat, the top of a dead volcano towering over Holyrood Park. Beheld a magnificent view of the sooty city, the rambling countryside, the sea. I wish I could describe it more vividly, but I had to pee. And I was keenly aware that I was about an hour and eight thousand jouncing steps away from a bathroom. On the way down, I spied a grove of trees off the path. Perfect, I thought. As I waded in there, the ground sloped down. The grasses grew higher and wilder. The shade deepened, and the temperature dropped with each step. I was sinking. When the grasses reached my chest, I thought, You know what? I’ll hold it. I walked out of there just a bit faster than I had walked in. 

I wasn’t afraid of a snake or a mugger. Fear is not the right word for what I was feeling at all; I was creeped out. No wonder the Scots and Britons of old imagined the fells and glens full of fairybeasts. The landscape plays with your mind, man. This was 2016, I’m brimming over with education, and I was close enough to the city to hear traffic—and yet a part of me was thinking, “Something weird in there.” Thinking: “You wade in there, you might not wade out.” 

Selfie near the top of Arthur’s Seat. Not a good photo, but it captures our personalities. Along with a bit of my thumb. 

4. One afternoon in London, we ducked into the British Library, mostly to catch a few minutes of peace. But no sooner was I inside than a little room off the main entrance beckoned me with a sign: “Treasures of the British Library.” 

Somehow this managed to be an understatement. What I saw in there knocked me out. Notebooks from Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Jane Austen’s writing desk. Handwritten manuscript pages from Dickens. A smoke-licked copy of Beowulf from the year 1000. 

But that’s not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about the moment that happened right after I stepped inside that room, the moment I laid my eyes on Handel’s composition draft of “Messiah.” I felt my mind detach from my body and float gently upward. Just then, someone farted. Across the room, a sharp little coronet blast of a fart. 

The guy next to me grinned. “Nice.” 

I shivered.

I didn’t understand my reaction at the time, and I’m still not sure I do, but I think it has something to do with the way the UK is a collision of opposites. Then and now. Violence and beauty. Heaven and earthiness. That’s the deep magic that kept spooking me as I walked along castle walls that were ADA-compliant, or stopped on a street that ran between a Starbucks and the Globe Theater. It was ridiculous and sublime. It was everything and everywhen, all at once. It was the feeling of eternity.