Very personal

I have been unable to assimilate the immensity of changes that are taking place. Everything is new different and exciting and I have been in the same city for over five months. Imagine starring at a white wall for months and then suddenly realizing the wall is actually green. It's so green it's actually blinding, leaving me wondering how come I could not see it before.

I am immersed in beauty. I have never seen so much beauty. It's been here all this time and I was just way too absorbed in my personal dramas, wishing to be somewhere else down below the Equator.

I have been sitting on the floor in the central university library facing the Meadows park for about 3 hours. Within three hours the colors in front of my eyes changed more than five times. I have never seen such a beautiful city. It's so beautiful and intimate that I get goosebumps and stomach butterflies when I walk down the streets. And I have no idea what has happened. What has changed? Have I changed? Have my senses taken a 360 degrees turn? All I want to do now is walk long walks, paint complex pictures, cook healthy meals, have long conversations, make friends and absorb every molten piece of this new life.

I have seen many beautiful places, many cities that touched me in one or another way, but nothing has ever come so close and personal. It's as if I am in love. As if I am flirting with this place every single day. I don't want the time to pass, I don't want to see other places, I don't want to leave. Just stay here, being able to enjoy the same view from the university library floor ever day, being able to plant my seed once and for all. And stay.

I, the traveler, the hard-to-satisfy over-critical Virgo have found myself in a situation of fortunate conditions. I love my city, my study, my house, my housemates, my few friends, my Forest cafe, my proximity to a national parks and hills and gardens, my nightlife options, my weather conditions, my vegetarian food availability, my fluency in the official language, my comfort and ease. Garnish all this with a dose of ready-made Scottish insanity and crudeness that make this polished capital city as haunted and dark as medieval times, and you get the picture.

And one more thing. The very fact that they are read-haired, red-bearded, green-eyed, dressed in beige and brown, lone, slightly cynical and may be more than slightly mad is enough of a reason to stay. One of them just passed by, took a big brown book from the philosophy shelf, gave me an approving kind smile, scratched his orangy beard and left as calmly and inconspicuously as he entered the library hall.