Many things in my life have captured such a gullible heart-fleeting flings and relationships, words, melancholy acts of revelation-but nothing quite so hauntingly lingers as the soul of Edinburgh within my veins.
What it was about the city, I could not tell you. Perhaps that it wasn’t a city at all, was the main attraction. A subtle city-one that does not beg of the liveliness and energies of all of its inhabitants, at all times. One that cautiously creeps under visitors’ skin upon arrival, and settles calmly, in a new home for years to come.
The problem with this understated settling becomes evident when you board the train to leave Edinburgh, as I did earlier today. There’s this pull at every muscle in your body-including the strings of your heart-as though you’ve lost a dear friend, forever.
Goodbyes aren’t really exchanged-as Edinburgh knows something, it seems, that you do not. Upon your outset from her simultaneously commercial and stylistically ancient streets, she is already planning your return.
Psychologically, as a capable human being, you simply attribute this notion of return to your own thoughts: “Oh, I’ll be back soon. I’ll bring mother and father back…they have to see everything Edinburgh has to offer.”. The thoughts continue in the same fashion, as you convince yourself you wouldn’t be without Lady Edinburgh for the rest of your life.
But, my dear friends, it is not you who decides. It is not those you made friends with while settled quietly in the streets of her city. Nor is it the financial resources one has, or presumes to have, in the future years of life.
Edinburgh decides.
I can hear her calling.
She is not worried…she knows it is inevitable that I will return.
She’s convinced me quite well.
did you visit david hume's grave?
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