Edinburgh

You know how memories, or the feelings that are strung along with them, have a taste? Or a smell? Or a sound? And when you dredge them up, or return to something recent but that was sharp and potent you feel it all the way through you? On your tongue, through your nose, a ghost sound ringing in your ears. 

I find it quite painful, a bitter sweet sensation, even if the memory is a good one. In fact, almost especially if it is. If I was in love (with a place, with a feeling, with what I was doing) then the notion that it has been and gone feels quietly catastrophic. Huge waves of emotion for something I can only retrace in my head before sleep, or in moments of reflection. And this emotion has nowhere to go, only to rise up in me, force me to recognise it, remember things that were but are no longer, wait for it to fade. Sometimes I find myself caught between clutching to the feeling of how brilliant the memory is, how powerful the emotion, and at the same time wishing for time to pass so it can be less sharp, less immediate. 

The exact memory I keep visiting is a recent one, so the feeling is still very strong. I can still taste it, smell it; dusty, ever so slightly of sweat that isn’t mine, cheap wine, after shave, shampoo. And the sound is quieter, but street music and thousands of people all moving together at once, their excitement palpable and matching my own, shouting, laughing, dancing. I can hear it. And I want it. I want it all back, the feeling, the taste, the smell, the sounds, the brilliance of it all. 

But it is locked now, into something that happened, something anticipated, something experienced, something only to be remembered. Until next year, when I can go again and find new tastes, new smells... same sound maybe. 

God it’s painful, and so lovely.