I first noticed a creeping feeling of unhealth while sitting outside the library reading Christopher Marlowe on a Sunday afternoon. A throat-clearing became something more ominous, and I knew that the coming week would be an unpleasant one, remembering both the physical discomfort of sickness and the dullness that comes with being trapped in the cycle of fatigue and Kleenex.
I was especially unhappy because I’d been planning to go to the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, to stay with a friend—it was one of the European cities I wanted to check off my list, and I hardly wanted to cancel my trip to lie in bed. If I stayed in St. Andrews, I’d spend the next weekend reenacting the self-aggrandizing rituals I’ve honed over years of having a poor constitution—the Simpsons reruns, the trips into town to obtain medicine, the redefinition of “medicine” to include twice-daily iced Starbucks beverages. I wanted to be healthy, to get out of bed and walk around town unimpeded by a hacking cough or by the desire to get my “good-for-the-throat” iced venti. I resigned myself to the so-called “refreshers’ plague,” which had been sweeping the new American students, due to our unaccustomed immune systems. It was perhaps the most familiar ritual of all to feel overwhelming self-pity at the onset of a simple cold.
Huddling farther into my coat, I gazed beyond the huge, strangely empty library lawn out to the North Sea, and wanted to walk down on the shore—it seemed a fitting moment to go out by myself and look across the water. I’d wanted to stroll the shore ever since I got here, feeling a sense of calm whenever the sea was in sight. A friend here, in spite of my ignorance of what Tauruses are or are not, told me that my love of the ocean indicates I must be a “water sign.” When she said this, I recalled a kid from my high school, who told me he almost chose to go to Columbia after he sat by the river. It gave him a sense of peace and communion with nature, he’d said, which I’d found risible. After all, I barely remembered there was a river near Columbia. On the rare occasions when I went down to Riverside Park, I had always felt chilly, and left soon.
I considered my options for getting to the beach. The elfin back gate in the lawn’s sea-facing wall was locked. And would I just wander around, coughing on fellow beach-walkers and their dogs? Seeing the water from afar was enough for now—I was feeling sick enough that I put a stop to my reading and walked the twenty minutes home to my dorm. I couldn’t find a taxi, not even at the bus station—where they usually lined up—and the whimsical roads of St. Andrews seemed a machine designed to elicit drudgery.
The days of sickness were predictably, self-fulfillingly dull. I walked along the stone path by the sea to get to my classes, but kept my head down, away from the waves. The sun reflecting off the water made my head hurt, the wind coming off the sea gave me a cold sweat. I was a bushel of complaints—I wanted to appreciate where I was, and I was worried my time in Scotland would become a series of sicknesses. I am something of a hypochondriac.
So I was surprised that, come Thursday, my cough was a dry, quiet ghost of what it had been, and I trundled to the train station, from whence I’d proceed to the city. I wasn’t entirely better—I fell asleep sporadically on the train due to the side effects of Sudafed. In the interims when I was awake, though, I didn’t look once at the book I’d brought (later Updike, about mortality and time passing)—I stared out the window at everything passing by me. I hadn’t seen much of Scotland besides St. Andrews, and I was struck by the feeling that, trapped in my own head, I hadn’t really seen even that yet. I wanted to take photos of the broad yellow fields with grazing sheep, the small stone houses with wool sweaters drying on clotheslines, and the sea—still limitless, still a chilly, alluring blue. I had been so caught up in the narcissism of sickness, so worried about losing time in St. Andrews to a simple head cold, that I’d forgotten the sea was still there.
Once I got back from my overnight in Edinburgh, where I spent six pounds on a cocktail that took three cups and an orange zester to prepare (it was delicious), I rendezvoused with friends in St. Andrews. Only sneezing sporadically, I joined them at a local bar in cards and dancing. I was prepared to head back—it was a later night than any I’d spent over here, and I had to read the next day—but we took a detour by the golf course and ended up on the beach. The feeling of sand under my Top-Siders and the sounds of the waves I could barely see reminded me of how my schoolmate felt about the Hudson River. I felt that I was somehow getting back the time I’d spent in bed that week as I stood with friends, letting the cold night wind blow over me, but not shivering.
Daniel D’Addario is a Columbia College junior majoring in American studies. He is spending the semester at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The State I Am In runs alternate Fridays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com.