Glasgow Underneath
There’s still magic in the cities, in the way the pavement glitters in Glasgow, the tiny pieces of glass shining in the sunlight.
The sunlight in Scotland is silver, did you know that? In all other places it’s gold.
The silver sunlight falls and insinuates itself among the old red and brown sandstone buildings, on the days when the sun makes an appearance at at all. At night, the city glows orange in the warmth of the sodium bulbs, but they are being replaced so that night in Glasgow will begin to look as silvery as the daytime. This doesn’t feel right, as Glasgow should be golden at night, with the multicoloured neon lights reflecting off the dark and choppy waters of the Clyde.
Home, Glasgow, the dark and light of it.
Did you know that Glasgow has its own Atlantis, Grahamston, that faded into nothing as the behemoth of Central Station was built, the echoes of the passengers walking back and forth ringing through its empty streets?
Did you know the Botanic Gardens has a mysterious underground passageway, graffitied in the shadows? The green lawn is filled with sunbathing students and families pushing prams, while the haunted beneath rears up just there, around that bend in the trees.
The ancient arches of Glasgow university thrill those lucky enough to work or study there, a living, breathing fantasy novel. The air has the tang of silver, like the sunlight, and the sour taste of Tennent’s brewery when the wind is just right, and the breath of a thousand voices, a million words spoken here, now past. It’s cold, and it’s warm, and it’s hard to know which is which, and the university towers over you like the mountains of the Highlands, stern and colder in shadow, cloaked in history like the tomb. The dead are still living here, your own footsteps will one day fill the haunted future of unborn students who will one day walk the same cloistered halls.
You see? There is magic and mystery, even in the cities. The Necropolis looms silent over a spilled salt town of Buckfast bottles and coal-blackened walls, sorrow and joy and a pulled pint, yesterday, today, and tomorrow folding back upon themselves like an origami puzzle of how we fit into the past and the future, where we stand in history, and whether or not we will form a part of the folklore of days to come ourselves.
You need not travel to the hinterland to view the touch of Faerie. It is here, now; it is there, then; it is cities and buildings and subways and the bustle of grocery stores, pubs filled with riotous laughter, friends over for dinner to tell tales, tall and not so much.
People have always been people, and that’s where the magic has always been. Doors to Faerie are everywhere, city or country, fairway or farm, but they are primarily held within the human heart.
And that, quite literally, is everywhere.
