Wednesday 30 September 2015

Alive


It started raining when I went running last week. An actual avalanche - a grey blanket enveloped the streets.  The raindrops were catapults – the size of small bombs. I was four kilometres in, jogging on a cloud, fuelled by motivation to run a full ten.

The clouds had their own plans though.

Instead my shoes sank into puddles and soon, with damp socks and a soaked-through shirt, my eyes blurred. I had little idea where I was or where I was going. Where I should be or how I’d get there.
But I was – and, right then, that was all that mattered.

All too often we hide away at a mere drizzle, curse ourselves for forgetting an umbrella, for wearing open-toed leather shoes that refuse to be moistened. We pray for the wind to stop whistling, for the air to stop tingling, for the sky to stop being so damn blue. We wait all summer for winter and all winter for summer. It’s mid-July and God forbid the sun burns too bright – it’ll be a race to the nearest air conditioned space, inhaling and exhaling, a superficial smile plastered onto our face.

Because that’s what living is, right?

It doesn’t have to be.

Try it sometime. Go outside when the sky roars, when it feels as if this earth is on the verge of crashing down around you. Delve into the destruction, rummage amongst the shatters – you never know what you’ll find. Let the drops dampen your cheeks, lick away your inhibitions. Sing with the melody of the thunder, dance to the rhythm of the lightning. Let your eyes wander, peek at the sun even though you were always told not to - everyone’s done it. Run until your legs lose all feeling, let the sweat drip down your nose in summer, allow the frost to nibble at it in winter. Either way it’ll turn red. Red for passion, red for excitement. Red for the blood that erupts through your veins. Red for unconditional love for this. For all of this.

Red for alive.    

Tuesday 15 September 2015

Dublin


His lips opened up, a little pink from the autumnal chill; my eyes met his – a glimmer through the drizzle of the afternoon. A passerby, a man I’d never seen before and would never see again, yet one that looked at me as if I were worthy.

That’s when I knew I’d like Dublin.

A city with sunsets like a child would paint them – yellows, oranges, and pastel pinks splattered across the sky. A city that soaks your shoes and reddens your nose but one that wraps its arms around you and holds you tight, makes you feel worth it. One that hands you burning plates that overflow with foods you’d never be able to name. Plate after plate, bowl after bowl until your stomach smiles. Every cobbled street stained with its own puddles of Guinness, dusted with its own powder of Irish pride. Every mug of coffee fits, as if the handle was moulded for your hand and nobody else’s. Music echoes around corners, laughs sound from every sidewalk.

 “Pick a word to describe Dublin,” Mum said.

“Vibrant,” I answered without much thought.

But it is so much more.

There is something magical about Dublin. Something vibrant, yes. But something electric also, something that makes your tongue tingle, draws goose bumps up and down your arms even though your coat is zipped up tight. Something laidback but something ambitious. A city that sprints from stillness but, if you blink, you won’t miss it. It’ll wait for you.  

A magnetic city – it could be positive and you could be negative, or it negative and you positive but, either way, you are drawn together. There is a pull, an attraction. Your fingers find each other, your head fits into the city’s chest. Like a puzzle piece you didn’t know you were missing. One you didn’t know needed to be found.

I found it.  

Dublin, I’ll be back. 

Tuesday 1 September 2015

Senior


Senior year.

Are you ready? they ask. As if it is ‘easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy’ to prepare for your last year of school. You’re almost an adult, and yet you find yourself wishing for nothing more than to be young enough to learn that rhyme for the first time.

Because here it is.

The last year of a routine you’ve been following since the day you were old enough to hold a pen – it’s all you’ve ever known. The last first day, the last spiralled notebooks, the last locker combinations and report cards. The last lunches in the school’s rancid cafeteria and the last scribbled notes passed across desks. The last year to feel like a child.

It’s electric. Voices ring through hallways, goosebumps layer students’ skin. Everyone knows. Teachers purse their lips together as a silent way to say: “this is it”. 

The last year that everything stays the same.

So enjoy it. Every moment. Don’t hold your breath through the homework assignments and exams. Don’t wish away the hours in a day or the days in a week. Why rush it? For the last time in your life, sit in a four-walled classroom and let your eyes wander over every poster plastered onto the corkboards. Listen to the teacher’s words, taste the flavour over your tongue. Allow yourself to be taught, to be led through life because you’ll soon see that there isn’t always someone to follow. Exhale the stress and inhale the finality of it all. The exhilaration.

Senior year will be everything that you make of it. Make something great – like nothing you’ve ever made before. 

This is it.