Lines: or, New Beginnings

Some lines are made for crossing and some are there to make you stay put. However the scariest lines are the ones that exist to mark the places where you must ever so carefully dance back and forward and never lose your balance.

I suppose that little epigraph may seem rather unusual at the start of my new London blog (formerly the Dublin blog). I'm sure you're sitting there thinking "what the heck do lines have to do with London?" or some other, slightly less savory, word than "heck." Well, if you'll just give me a few minutes of your time I hope I can enlighten you.

I think any teenager knows that crossing lines is an inherently thrilling experience. It's the bold, daringness of it all - the thrilling newness of the experience and the self-satisfaction that comes from breaking the mold and trying something that was once nothing more than a dream. In some ways, that's what London is for a lot of people. It's the distant dream of a metropolitan life in a city where everyone dresses in their own style and hundreds of languages and accents whiz by you when you walk.

But for a city so completely heterogeneous, London can be shockingly conformist. There are some lines people just don't cross (and no I don't mean the yellow line in the tube). If you sit and observe for long enough you begin to notice an almost subconscious reconditioning. For example, London had two paces and two paces alone. There's the tourist pace (what I'd call a hasty stroll accompanied by a start-stopping action of a windshield wiper in a drizzle) and then there's the Londoner stroll - a fast-paced, wide-strided race down the street to see who's the best at avoiding other people while not actually ever looking at them.

Perhaps ND people will understand what I mean best when I compare it to the dining hall in the first two weeks of each academic year. The first few days are utter chaos but, eventually, the freshmen figure out which corners to cut close, which to swing wide and where to never stand waiting and slowly, order is once again restored. Well, a big city is a bit like that. Despite all your individuality, the city slowly pulls you into its flock of sheeple (or its horde of incredibly well-dressed zombies).

Finally that third line. I can't decide if that dancing is more akin to prancing or a light-footed Irish jig. I'm leaning towards the jig though. This line is only relevant because it's what my program currently feels like. It's the uncertainty of whether doing an MA in Literature is opening a world of options to me or pigeonholing me into a field where I will be doing a whole lot of nothing. Surrounded by people with actual professions I can't help but question my own choice of direction. All in all, I'm dancing on a line because I fear that crossing it will leave me with a feeling that Brad Pike describes as "pretending to be a real person who does real person things."
And that's a feeling that I don't think I could ever describe half as well as he does. So to conclude my blog I will roll all my fears anxieties up into a little hyperlink and let Brad Pike do the explaining for me.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/pretending-to-be-a-real-person-who-does-real-people-things/

Miss you all!
A