Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Belfast, Dhaka, & Beaumont

Almost one year ago I was wandering through the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland. I had been traveling for the better part of two weeks, with family and fiance, and was now, again, on my own in a foreign land.

It was a decent day out, maybe ten degrees Celsius, sun interspersed with cloud. I went to a museum in the morning and then ate lunch in a park near the museum. The park was typically Irish, an oasis of greens tucked into the city. I wandered about the park and was spit out into a university or college campus, the name of which escapes me now. I wandered about the campus wondering if people assumed I was a student. Red hair with a backpack, you never know.

I finally pulled out my map of Belfast and pointed myself west, towards the main city center, a crowded patch of land that housed government buildings and a mishmash of stores, from bookstores to clothing boutiques to bars. The joy of wandering in Irish towns is that they are so old so as to have become rather dismissive of modern urban planning. Thus one walks about, usually and happily lost, in a small area that yields new and curious nooks and crannys. Endless winding alleys lead to hidden cobbled streets with old bookshops and old men in tweed hats.

I stopped in an old bookstore, one of the last bastions holding out against the big business that is modern bookselling. I moseyed about in the bookstore for a bit, careful not to let my bag knock anything over. I climbed the stairs to the second, the third floor, marveling at the floor-to-ceiling stack of dusty uncommercial books.

I think I spent about four or five hours in this area of Belfast, I'm not too sure. I know that the sun had dipped below city hall when I began to make my way back to my rather shabby hostel. I think it was in Belfast that I truly felt a touch of what it might be like to live in Europe. The idea that one can be surrounded by all the modern trinkets and gadgets and yet still be cocooned within the immense weight of history is an idea I found to be intoxicating.

Someone asked me a few weeks ago what I saw myself doing in the next five years. Had I been asked that when I was younger I am sure that I would have spouted off an easy answer. No doubt I would have a simple black and white response, one that left little room for adjustment or indecision. A cocksure young lad doesn't think life would ever dare throw him a curveball.

I don't answer that question the same way anymore, even though my life is perhaps more settled and more content than it has ever been. I hold off answering that question because once in a while you land in an odd situation, one you would have never considered in your wildest dreams. Wandering through Belfast, a newly engaged man, soon to be headed back to the Middle East. Yeah, I didn't exactly call that one when I was 18.

I take a more open view to what the next five years will bring. I do this because when life throws you for an adventure, the end results can be far more rewarding than a set plan could ever be. The ends of adventure are perhaps the greatest spoils of all and to predict and stay true to a cold hard trail ahead of you, with no option to take an interesting side road or three, doesn't give you the kind of stories you can attribute wrinkles to.

I write this at the end of a night when two good friends stopped by for a dinner. For me, two years ago, to have predicted this dinner ever taking place would have been against almost all the odds I have ever known. This dinner, the conversation that followed, and the conversations I hope to have in the years to come, stems not from a set path in life, but instead from a winding alley that lead me to a new nook of rewarding discovery.

It was good to see you both again. Be safe and send pictures.

A sovereign thought, delivered to your door at 11:36 PM ~~ 3 bonsai trees

shout out out out out out

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