Mundanity

The Meadows are not too busy, there’s a couple of friends playing frisbee, an old man walking his dog, a group of flatmates walking home together, carrying heavy bags of a week’s worth of groceries from Lidl. I approach the university library along the marked pathways, showing me exactly  which  path I must use to enter and which to exit. There are signs advising students to book a study slot in the library via an online platform and thanking us for our cooperation and support in every window.

As I swipe my student card to enter, I pass a girl whose grey eyes and blonde hair look familiar.

“You’re going in the wrong way, you know, you need to enter through there,” she points to the other door, amused that there indeed are people who don’t understand which of the marked pathways are correct for entrance.

“Hey,” I greet her and look her in the eyes. I know who she is now. We used to be on the same dance team in second year. But that’s about a century ago.

“Ah, hey, Kat, I thought you looked familiar, just didn’t recognise you with the mask on,” she responds.

The library is completely silent. There’s hand sanitiser everywhere, directing us to keep ourselves and everyone else safe, and a few students walking up and down the stairs, alone. The otherwise lively atmosphere, be it cheerful, as people submit their assignments and laugh with relief, or dreadful, because some haven’t gotten any sleep in the past 48 hours, is irreversibly gone. The lady behind a protective glass at the reception scratches her nose covered by a red facemask and sneezes.

As I exit, carefully choosing the right pathway this time, I’m hit by a wave of nostalgia as the wind slaps me in my face again. Perhaps unknowingly, my thoughts glide back to the days when there were groups of students hanging out in front of the library and all over campus, eating packed lunch or smoking pre-rolled cigarettes. There’s a group of three girls in long, black coats quietly chatting in front of the library café. I start making my way back to our cozy little student flat we call home this year. The sun peaks out and smiles at me from behind the clouds for a bit.

At home, we light a lot of candles. It’s started to rain again. I sit at the desk in my room. It’s very small, but cozy and calm, and it has everything I need. Sometimes, we sit in the living room or at the dining table. We brew coffee in the kitchen in between online lectures. During online tutorials, we get to observe one another in our home environments through the web camera. One student has a poster hanging behind them on the wall, another student is sitting by the window, her ceiling plant dangling above her head, and some don’t turn their cameras on at all. I find it a bit strange to see people this way, they seem so vulnerable just sitting there in their home, a place once so intimate and private, now exposed by the blurred boundaries of current events. I’m meeting my dissertation supervisor via Microsoft Teams later this week. He usually sits in his kitchen and sips on a cup of tea.

In the evening, my flatmate and I will play cards together and talk about our thoughts and feelings and things. We will laugh and go to sleep and tomorrow there will be another day, another day of a life at university so alien that it’s become familiar. The streets will still be busy and the cars will be passing by and people will be queuing in front of cafés and shops and grocery stores and sanitise their hands and the city will remain empty. And I will sit at my desk and learn about the science of human personality, and nations and nationalism, and I will be grateful that I’ve been given the chance to experience you, Edinburgh, as beautiful now as ever. For your spirit will forever remain a part of me.