Mood-Exhausted
Listening to- Two Coffins, Against me!
You can tell a lot about a Dubliner by the way they walk alone through the crowded city.
Some people are like bowling balls. A solid existence of mass. Soldiering on through the streets as long as they have momentum behind them. There are those melt into the crowd like a car merging into traffic and departing to their exit without much of a sound. Just the occasional "pardon me" and they are on their way. Others are like feathers. Delicate in the way they breeze in and out of crowds. Gentle in nature they seem to float along at the whim of the sidewalk.
Sometimes when you float along heading wherever life calls to you next. You lock eyes with a stranger and it's as if you have experienced a head on collision. This is no ordinary accident. This is a hit and run. A lock of eyes and like that you are dented. But they keep on moving breezing by or soldiering on because the damage could not be all that bad and their destination is of the utmost importance. They walk away un scathed and unworried. The interaction slipping from their memory like a feather drifting through your palm.
In a city, like Dublin, when you are fresh you collect these scratches and dings. You wonder about each person and try to digest them from what little you are given. Some people leave larger marks then others and some will occasionally stop and ask for directions. But mostly you will never know anything about them but how they walk through the city streets. Eventually when the roads have grown familiar and your scratches make you undiscernalble from the thousands of others around you, you become the force against others. The head on collision in a strangers path.
Just when you become part of the crowd and the path is ingrained into your mind something is thrown at you that changes everything. That is Dublin. Just when you think you have gotten comfortable. When you think you have it figured out, like what to wear to be prepared for the weather. It changes. Dublin is constantly changing and moulding. Always trying new outfits on for size. This city ebbs and flows just like the Liffey river.
With spring emerging and the warmer weather so does a lighter pace. A deep sigh that the city breathes together. One of not only relief but of anticipation for the time ahead. The senses of the populations dulled with a cloud of warmth. The glimpses of the sun leaving a sensation of longing. Routine and time has been comfortable and I have adjusted to the constant adaptation that is necessary here.
Soon I will travel back to Galway and hopefully onward to more of Europe. I am constantly content and anxious to move here. The need to adventure elsewhere is always nudging at my ankles. You can never truly settle in to a city in which you may just be passing through.
Just a little update. More adventures and mishaps to come.
From Dublin, With Love
Olivia
