I am unsure of these waves, shot gray by a thundering sky, struck gray by both the gulf and the gods. I am now always unsure of the sea, its true face momentarily lost of phantom, no skeletal beings ready to eschew the racket that all bones grow; this flicker of memory and might imprinted only for the decades on our land.
The beauty here, as I was destined to learn from my dear friend, is the sea. It is the short, shining houses and a familiar horizon that is not mine, but I see in his words, nostalgia, nick of a grin—is a fawn reflection of love for home. How often such love is forgotten—as if all love should be bent upon men and creatures; as if the love for our place, our space, our scents and tastes is somehow less real, is unexpected, is closer to the surface of hearts. Here is both a bright and a gray gift of home, the tasty brown fury only compliment to warmth of laughter; a laughter for which I fall fully and quickly; a laughter that licks my wounds.
This Irish city is almost oppositional to my own home, which is why I am unsure of the familiarity that ebbs inside. The buildings are short and undaunting; they do not challenge each other and thus can coexist freely and fully, not symmetrically but seemingly right. The home where I stay is a full house by the sea, unlike my apartment by the raw river of Manhattan. And yet time feels as velveteen as in my Westside. I wonder if it is the family, the strong, devoted mother; the wonderfully humoured father; the children grown and so clearly, fully loved. I wonder if the bond between my friend and I arises from this—knowing the warmth, the strength, the impossible beauty of familes and homes. As we have found a piece of that home not in the body of our old shared house, but in the space within and between us; an unidentifiable if sixth sense that marks kin by far more than blood.
