Day one: everyone in the Botanic Gardens was impressed with the fact that the Corpse Flower on bloom smelled like a corpse, even after the fact was established that a corpse was found nearby and I was called in to investigate, as it was clearly the corpse they had been smelling, I was told again and again, not the corpse, you see. I saw. I took notes. Nearby yellow daisies congregated into a conspiracy of gorses. A Glaswegian weatherman who left for Los Angeles and who only lasted a week before ending his final broadcast with “The f** is this?” and wandering off a blue screen and back to Scotland regaling his seatmate with tales of the American life, and I grew sleepy, swelled into the Grand Canyon, a flock of Mississippi Rivers over and above the systematic chimneys as seen from the roof of the 7 bus crossing the North Bridge. Down the stairs, thank the bus driver, and towards the flat and an arcing bellyflop into the bed. No time for squad cars. Rainy columns of The Scottish Academy made me think of the scaffolding that lined the Capitol dome – workers oxygenating the air as the exterior grew into a kind of bone. Walking the scaffolding at midnight. The comets. When I was young, my father and I would get up to go outside and watch the comets the way wranglers get up early to stare at hordes of sheep or cattle with their carry-about-in-the-field tin mugs of coffee. Day two meant a reckoning with the dead: after the first, a second body had been found on the sweeping green path the cyclists swoop down in front of Arthur's Seat. It was a body covered in parakeets, macaws, parrots, and golden co*katoos. I somehow saw Kelvingrove dogs running through the Kelvingrove dark and the pixie-like balls skittering through the gra**. To reckon with it – the machinery of the job demanded it. The birds hopped about. One co*katoo continually reached into a breast-level shirt pocket, removed a ticket, inserted it back into the pocket, and repeated the process all over again. I reached for the ticket.