clearbluecup

As I flowed along with the crowd today, someone turned around abruptly in front of me. He was wearing a little golden scarf, with tassles that bounced and danced. "Oh shit," he mumbled, and brushed past me in the opposite direction.

In Dublin, people are everywhere. There is no place where there aren't any people. You cannot walk in a straight line down the pavement, because people burst in from every direction and stand in your way and talk loudly on their mobile phone. I've been here only 4 days and it feels like forever.

There are so many people and the roads are so narrow (and lots of them are being dug up) that the traffic system has completely disintegrated into complete and utter chaos. So quite a lot of people have taken to alternate forms of transportation - walking, running, and biking. The sidewalks are as congested as the roads at 5 or 6pm. It's unusual to see the same face twice, but it does happen - no matter how large the city, people living or working in the same place will see each other at regular times.

It's the irregularities that stand out though. A few minutes after noticing this golden scarf, I see the same guy walking towards me. He is talking on his mobile and I catch just enough of his conversation - "it was as if I knew where I was GO-ing, which would be a first" - and it makes me grin. I have no idea where I'm going, and neither does he. The gay man with the little tassled golden scarf and the gawky canadian girl with the funny hair are one and the same. We are all in the same mess together. I am in the middle of this massive seething nest of humanity, and I have only a very vague idea of what I am supposed to be doing and where I need to go - I am planning just the very next thing in advance and I feel like I'm hanging onto the world by my fingernails. But so is everyone else, it appears, and so that's ok.

yesterday I went on a cleaning rampage. well, rampage might be a bit strong. but I was still doing some serious scrubbing. I carefully took down the clock on the kitchen wall, washed off the thick layer of greasy dust that had accumulated on the top of it and aligned the thumbtack and the hook to reattach it to the wall. except thumbtack and hook didn't quite make it and the clock went crashing to the ground. the mechanism sprung off the back and went flying across the floor, and both hands came off and were sliding around the inside of the clock. "I've broken time!" I thought.

tom got out the scotch tape and the screwdriver and reassembled the clock, which I hadn't really broken functionally. It was just a minor structural scrape, and in a minute the clock was back on the wall like nothing had happened except a year's accumulated dust had been dissaparated.

afterwards we surfed and queued up songs on soulseek and searched for things to see and do in wicklow. tom made an excel worksheet to calculate how much data we could download per second 24 hours a day to stay within eircom's broadband bandwidth limit. the figures weren't encouraging, but who had time to worry about that when there was the whole world wide web out there waiting for us??

later, we looked up at the clock over freshly poured cups of steaming tea. 7:30pm?? How can that be? time flies when you're having fun, I guess. we picked up our tea and made our way into the bedroom to get ready for our dinner engagement at 8pm. Halfway through the process of getting dressed we happened to glance at the bedside clock. 6:28pm it said. What? Let's find another clock. We both reach for our mobile phones - 6:28 again and again. It's a miracle! an hour has been miraculously added to our lives! so we made the most of it, but still couldn't manage to make it to dinner on time.

after dinner, we debated whether or not to leave in search of good music and dancing at a local club. "What time is it?" we asked each other, and nobody had any answers. watches were broken, mobiles were void of battery power, clocks were hidden in the recesses of the menu structure on the television.

With two and a half days at home each week, every minute seems precious and elusive. Unfortunately, like trying to clamp down on a handful of sand, the more I want every moment to be perfect and fulfilling the more stress and pressure I experience. The only thing that works is throwing away the clock and exhaling.