what i listen to when i'm walking here.
funny how i think just the opposite.
i'm safe in a crowd. i'm secure when no one knows my name. i have my discman and two feet, and we walk together, pacing and observing the sidewalks, the cracks, the back ways until we know them all by heart, by scar, by palm and index finger.
galway is a small city. frankly, the poor thing isn't even really a city by american standards. then again, in the states, everything has to be bigger, more expansive, a better value, and up to the standards of every critical consumer soul that sets foot across county lines.
it's different here, or at least, it tries to be.
city centre is a fifteen minute walk from top to bottom, ten side to side. and when you say something like, "meet you at the bookshop at four..." people say things like "eason's?" and you say something like "no, charlie's." because there's only two of them anywhere near the place that you would be going to have tea. the place that you would inevitably run into two people that you know, and you would have passed three that you recognize on the three minute walk from the chosen bookshop to the one of two places that you have chosen to sit down and enjoy a leisurely cuppa.
you realize this within six weeks of moving here. in fact, all of this probably happens within your first two weeks here.
these are things that a city would take a year at least to introduce you to. you are the city's girlfriend, and the city is ashamed to introduce you to its family. because for as many people as a city holds, the 'locals' are the ones that will judge you. you're not or a "bostonian" or an "austinite" until the city introduces you to things like the tricycle man or the cigarette bummer (you know you're from austin when you palm your pack just before that guy walks past your table at spiderhouse). even when you're familiar with these things and you begin to become comfortable in their company and you're proud of yourself for stepping to the gutter when you hear that echoing MOOOOOOOOOOOVE! ... you are humbled in the presence of those that know the neighborhoods. after all, you're just the city's new floozy, you don't know the back story, or what it was like before it became a hippy.
cause if you're an austinite, you know about hyde park and rudy's and the best illegal swimming holes.
cause if you're a bostonian, you know what it means when that nasal noise "no, i'm from brighton" comes out and about the mice at park street station and about how not to get mugged on the charles at night.
cause if you're from nawlins, you pronounce it nawlins and you know the bad block good block game and you think that the streetcar is worth it because it at least offers up a breeze.
but i digress.
they say that every city is dangerous.
i had this girl sit me down and tell me how horrible it was that there was like three rapes and two muggings last year.
ok, that would be a month on my block in nawlins.
a year in my high school.
a day the city of boston.
galway is a city of cobblestone and one square, in which it is apparently perfectly safe to fall asleep in the taxi line as i know someone who has.... twice. i mean that she woke up at nine in the morning after a night of drinking and stretched and yawned as though it were her own bed.
it is a city with a river running along it, suicidal out to the bay.
galway is a city of 80,000 people (give or take 20,000 college students depending on the season).
i sat on the bus today in rahoon park, waiting, and a man boarded.
he was a heavyset man with graying and very much so thinning hair with an oversized navy windbreaker and some crumbs on his chin. he didn't smile, and he didn't wave. he did a little nod to me. i knew i recognized him, but from where? i had an image in my head of him in a light blue shirt handing me something. but i couldn't place him. but my point is that he recognized me and did a little nod. galway is like that. i began to eliminate possibilities, not a cab driver, not a convenience store that i frequent.... OH, the big bartender from cullinane's.
and i smiled to myself, because galway is like that.
it's the type of city in which at least two people call me 'texas' and everyone knows your vice within a week.
at first, it unnerved me. it made me feel watched and violated. i got weird and anti-social when i ran into people in city centre. you don't just run into people in austin unless you hang out at the same coffeeshop for like a year. i went to the same laundry mat for two years in austin, nearly the same day every week for two years ... and i never saw the same person twice.
at first, i wanted to leave this place because i couldn't find a place to call my own, a place where i wouldn't see that guy with the annoying laugh, a place where i wouldn't be stuck in what i considered an awkward conversation because i'm terrible at small talk, a place where i felt safe and alone.
i can walk home at two in the morning, the full forty minutes from whatever pub we laughed out of, and though my spine does stiffen a bit and i don't drop my eyes from the shadows ... i realize that's just my instinct ... it's not because i feel threatened.
galway is dangerous, but probably only because i feel safe.
