briefly, since it tended to cause strife amongst strangers who were unaware of each other’s tender world views. We talked on religion for a stint, but employed a similar tactic of soft shoes and barely audible whispers. Aleesha and I had agreed that sports in general were a magnificent bore. We both loved animals and hated to eat mushrooms. I preferred a cold beer, whereas she fancied something more classy, like a shandy (a mixture of lager and lemonade, which I had not yet sampled while frolicking “across the pond”).
She had lived in the Burren of Ireland all her life, but had only recently relocated to Galway. “Something about the streets. You can’t get lost, but it never looks the same way twice. It’s as though the city reinvents itself every morning. That may sound silly, but I swear it to be true!” she exclaimed, and I replied that a daily genesis in Galway was a perfectly reasonable assumption. Her statement intrigued me. She so very much loved the city, and I could see that passion smoldering in her eyes. It was then that I realized I had fallen into a deep madness for this young lady, knowing that she was so very bound at the hip to this city, that she could never be torn away from it, not even by a wild-eyed fleeting American like myself. Though I knew this to be utter silliness, that our love could not continue beyond my two day stay in her city, it saddened me to my very core. Maybe it was the mere thought that there could be no further growth, under any circumstances. Though the rational part of me wanted nothing more than what had already transpired, the romantic in me felt pity for our doomed eventual condition. “This city breathes in and out. If you close your eyes, you can hear it,” she said, and I nodded, not really hearing the words for what they implied. Rather, I stayed affixed, eyeball to eyeball, with the light of her being. “Close your eyes, dummy,” she barbed at me with a jesting smile. My expression changed, as if to say, “Oh yes, I understand.” I clenched my eyelids shut and listened.
At first, there was nothing. The quiet murmur of pedestrians and tourists, the click and clack of a few wooden shoes, the soft thud of sneakers and rubber soles. There was no automotive traffic allowed in the downtown area, so that was a blessing to my auditory experiment of observation. I could hear only people and their daily plots, unwinding in slow motion. Their voices blended together in a sort of maelstrom of sounds. The brushing noises of people’s legs swishing together, the fabric of their pants making soft rhythmic music.
And then it happened. A slowly churning fiddle in the distance. The voice of a young man, explaining to his mate that the art of film is a bloody dying animal. A dog barks, soft but raspy. A door swings open, a group of chatty men emerge, speaking in turn on the laurels of capitalism and its alternatives. The wheels of a cart, squeaking as the burdensome load is dragged through the streets by a local laborer.
They were speaking to me, one at a time, making their presences known in turn. It was as though they were conducting themselves in a symphony, and I was the lone audience member. Each instrument, an echoing chamber in the heart of Galway, chimed in with its own interpretations of bustling activity, soft and riotous at the same time. It was composing itself out of mere human existence. The lack of gas-guzzling motorcades and blaring horns added to the charm of it all. A smell of burning peat struck my nose and it, too, became a newly recruited sound in the flurry of it all. I did not long for home. I longed to stay. This cornucopia of sound enveloped me, and I soon realized that this was the same way the city would have sounded one hundred years earlier. Two hundred years even. Sure, their conversational topics would have been different (perhaps speaking of the unilateral king instead of capitalism), but the general idea would have been just the same. This is
She had lived in the Burren of Ireland all her life, but had only recently relocated to Galway. “Something about the streets. You can’t get lost, but it never looks the same way twice. It’s as though the city reinvents itself every morning. That may sound silly, but I swear it to be true!” she exclaimed, and I replied that a daily genesis in Galway was a perfectly reasonable assumption. Her statement intrigued me. She so very much loved the city, and I could see that passion smoldering in her eyes. It was then that I realized I had fallen into a deep madness for this young lady, knowing that she was so very bound at the hip to this city, that she could never be torn away from it, not even by a wild-eyed fleeting American like myself. Though I knew this to be utter silliness, that our love could not continue beyond my two day stay in her city, it saddened me to my very core. Maybe it was the mere thought that there could be no further growth, under any circumstances. Though the rational part of me wanted nothing more than what had already transpired, the romantic in me felt pity for our doomed eventual condition. “This city breathes in and out. If you close your eyes, you can hear it,” she said, and I nodded, not really hearing the words for what they implied. Rather, I stayed affixed, eyeball to eyeball, with the light of her being. “Close your eyes, dummy,” she barbed at me with a jesting smile. My expression changed, as if to say, “Oh yes, I understand.” I clenched my eyelids shut and listened.
At first, there was nothing. The quiet murmur of pedestrians and tourists, the click and clack of a few wooden shoes, the soft thud of sneakers and rubber soles. There was no automotive traffic allowed in the downtown area, so that was a blessing to my auditory experiment of observation. I could hear only people and their daily plots, unwinding in slow motion. Their voices blended together in a sort of maelstrom of sounds. The brushing noises of people’s legs swishing together, the fabric of their pants making soft rhythmic music.
And then it happened. A slowly churning fiddle in the distance. The voice of a young man, explaining to his mate that the art of film is a bloody dying animal. A dog barks, soft but raspy. A door swings open, a group of chatty men emerge, speaking in turn on the laurels of capitalism and its alternatives. The wheels of a cart, squeaking as the burdensome load is dragged through the streets by a local laborer.
They were speaking to me, one at a time, making their presences known in turn. It was as though they were conducting themselves in a symphony, and I was the lone audience member. Each instrument, an echoing chamber in the heart of Galway, chimed in with its own interpretations of bustling activity, soft and riotous at the same time. It was composing itself out of mere human existence. The lack of gas-guzzling motorcades and blaring horns added to the charm of it all. A smell of burning peat struck my nose and it, too, became a newly recruited sound in the flurry of it all. I did not long for home. I longed to stay. This cornucopia of sound enveloped me, and I soon realized that this was the same way the city would have sounded one hundred years earlier. Two hundred years even. Sure, their conversational topics would have been different (perhaps speaking of the unilateral king instead of capitalism), but the general idea would have been just the same. This is
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