Green space

What you see above is what I see each morning (click the picture for a lovely big version). This (sadly) isn't my garden, but I live opposite this lovely park and enjoy it every day. Occasionally, I might choose a long detoured route home just so I can walk through this beautiful green space. A busy road is shrouded directly behind that line of trees but you would hardly know it, with birdsong being the only soundtrack to this peaceful place. Giant green sentinels shutting out the noisy reality of 2007, exchanging a thousand exhaust pipes for a gentle stereo rustle as the breeze meanders through this leafy panorama.
Just like my countryside post of a while back, being in this place allows room for the mind to truly breathe. Away from the stifling world of endless decisions, thoughts made here can meander from one connection to another without intrusion from the pressed-for-time world behind those trees.
You can wonder at the enjoyment which this simple space brings to so many people. Later in the evening a kids football session will take place here, literally with jumpers for goalposts as if to prove the timelessness of this space. But for now it's just me under a damp grey sky, planning nothing in particular and enjoying every precious second.

Blood

Another "guest post" ahhh. Nice oblique lyric from Editors, soon to release a new album. This song 'Blood', taken from their debut 'The Back Room' shows off a nice descriptive minimalism. Join the road.

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This wicked city just drags you down
You're with the red lights, your side of town

Don't say it's easy to follow a process
There's nothing harder than keeping a promise

Blood runs through your veins, that's where our similarity ends
Blood runs through our veins

There's nothing believable in being honest
So cover your lies up with another promise

Blood runs through your veins, that's where our similarity ends
Blood runs through our veins

If there's hope in your heart
It would flow to every part
If there's hope in your heart

Evening Rain Part 2

I guess after my rainy post of a few weeks ago, this one seemed impossible to not write about. There I was mesmerised by the visuals of rain without the physical effect. Snug indoors.
Here I was, 3am in Dublin city centre, and it was raining. Rain like I hadn't seen in the UK In years - a thick vertical forest of water reflecting the light from a million pubs as it splashed downwards on its journey to the pavement. There was no time for musing on the beauty of concentric circles when the pursuit of a warm taxi was a far more urgent consideration.
I was told that after taxis were deregulated in Dublin a few years ago, their numbers swelled from 2000 to something like 13,000. This fact didn't help much as it seemed nothing was going to stop for us that night. They were already full or going somewhere else. And it carried on raining - even heavier I thought, or maybe that was just part of my rapidly developing persecution complex.
So we walked home. Clothes and shoes and jackets soon became one sodden squelchy mass as we danced around puddles and precarious pavestones. At the half-way point I started smiling. There was this sudden moment of realising that I could do one of two things. I could be a miserable, conceited and very selfish bastard and bemoan the unfairness of it all in a "why me?" way, or I could enjoy this experience. I enjoyed the rain pouring through my hair and somehow being funneled down the back of my collar. I enjoyed the crazy laughter we all had at this shared misfortune. It felt like freedom, childhood memories of tasting raindrops, and mostly I just enjoyed the sensory rush of being reminded how ace it is to be alive. Or at least, knowing what it is to get thoroughly pissed on in Dublin. It all seems so simple.

Comment posting

It was only a matter of time. With apologies to those friends and readers who do occasionally post a response here, I am being forced to change the comment posting procedure to enable me to check comments. This is due to my being plagued by a particular sad Russian spammer in the last couple of weeks, who it turned was also spamming the boards of disabled children in a particularly insensitive manner.
I love to hear any and all responses to anything I write (yeah, I know I don't write enough), and I would like to stress that I am not doing this for reasons of censorship.

Charliex