The Outrun

by Amy Liptrot

I’d been reading some old diaries. Just before I’d left Orkney at eighteen, I’d written an arrogant list of all the things I wanted to achieve but also, perceptively: ‘This world of art/fashion/ literature/rock and roll that so attracts me could be my downfall.’

in London I was in a bubble. I went to the city to meet new people, to expand my ideas and social circles, but ended up meeting people more and more like myself. We curated our experiences into ever narrower subsections until we were unlikely to encounter anything that made us uncomfortable.

Nautical twilight ends when the sea is no longer distinguishable from the sky and ship navigation using the horizon becomes impossible.

I think about how the moon is getting further away from the Earth and although this is only happening at about 3.78 centimetres per year, or the same speed at which our fingernails grow, it seems terribly sad.

When first I left Orkney, my friend Sean gave me a compass. I used to wear it round my neck at parties, and when people asked about it, I would tell them it was so I could find my way home. Wherever I was, north was always home. I left the compass somewhere one night. Then I was totally lost.

I know people on Twitter I’ve never met better than people I’ve sat opposite for months at work or people I went to school with. I’ve moved around a lot but the internet is my home.

I am not tracking a mysterious or endangered species: I am carrying out semi-scientific studies into myself, performing bathymetry of the soul. My last.fm counts every song I listen to, constantly updating lists of my favourite artists and recommending new ones. My Facebook prioritises the friends I interact with. I jostle for retweets and edgerank. I am in an ever-changing process of defining myself, fascinated by counting and plotting and marking my daily activities and movements, collecting bottomless data. I’ve been tracking my sleep cycles and carrying out surveys of my dreams. I download a menstrual-cycle recorder and watch it sync with the moon, waxing and waning in another window on my browser.

I can fixate on a new friend and escape into their internet profiles, wanting to obliterate my personality with theirs.

The red notification of a message I’ve been waiting for gives a shadow of the sensation of the first sip of beer, of cold water when you’re parched, of a soft bed when you’re exhausted, of giving up swimming when you’re ready to drown.

I read old emails dozens of times, trying to find something that’s not there any more.

I take a step back from my blank-minded mouse-clicking and notice how, when my phone runs out of batteries, I can almost feel I don’t exist, my walk no longer being tracked.

I take a photograph of the sun setting over Westray and upload it to Facebook. My sky is converted into zeroes and ones, my personal data beamed to satellites, bounced through fibre-optic cables under the sea, through microwaves and copper wire, over islands, to you.

It feels ritualistic, this celebration of solstices and equinoxes, following compass points, moon and tide charts and sunrise calendars.

I climb out of the cairn and walk to the south-east corner of the Holm, the part that is not on Google Maps, and feel I have escaped. I am beyond the internet.

In grandiose moments, high on fresh air and freedom on the hill, I study my personal geology. My body is a continent. Forces are at work in the night. A bruxist, I grind my teeth in my sleep, like tectonic plates. When I blink the sun flickers, my breath pushes the clouds across the sky and the waves roll into the shore in time with my beating heart. Lightning strikes every time I sneeze, and when I orgasm, there’s an earthquake. The islands’ headlands rise above the sea, like my limbs in the bathtub, my freckles are famous landmarks and my tears rivers. My lovers are tectonic plates and stone cathedrals. 23

I ascend the hill in a crouched position, probably watched by amused islanders in the houses below. I lie forward into the wind, like a mattress of air: it takes my breath and exhausts me – a full-body experience. It’s loud enough to hide in.