Category Archives: Budapest Life

Not quite a diary

Bem Rakpart

Bank side
Let your mind go

 

A finely scented pipe, by that I mean tobacco, ornate in its design

The drift of smoke, the owner’s look, all the ingredients for conspiracy/ intrigue.

With a sun set reflecting off the windows on the far-side the sunlight, in rebounds, trickles across to where I am, but then suddenly, perhaps a moment, a cloud or a passing minute, it’s gone.

I’m left instead in the veil of a bright bank walk evening, the benches are filling up.

The joggers are sweating, while the cyclists glide arrogantly by.

On the river a tour boat moves southwards, the snap happy tourists confined; perhaps not, perhaps they’re just weary,

And at Batthyany they’ll be ready to dock.

The cars down below, they stop and they flow,

now and then I gain a new neighbour

But high perched on this wall maybe they can’t see me at all,

Or maybe they just never notice.

Again I look up for ideas, inspiration is fading it seems

The treelined ‘rakpart’ calls me onwards…

and downwards to the city beneath.

Ah yes…the pubs where i would have frequented

the cellars, the smoke and the beers…

A tourist boat, another now passing distracts me,

A new life it seems.

I hear the squeak of an unoiled bicycle, the rubber on tarmac below,

a bird I heard earlier is silenced as the traffic’s beginning to grow.

The light while still present, soon fading,

a breeze at my back urges me on,

the river and sky now nearly one hue…

Ok, it is time and I’m gone!

Shifting perspectives

Walking on a stop or two instead of standing, waiting for that bus, perhaps helped remove expletives from the run of these few preceding words. Sitting on the wall here on Varosmajor utca, 2 stops off Széll Kálmán tér, I’m in the early noon sunlight, somewhat protected by a thin, cotton ball film of cloud, and by the cooling which I’d expect of September.

However hot it is today, it seems to me perfection.

A fly ventures to land on my bag, I let it.

The constant rumble of traffic; music!

The notion of an approaching bus still leaves me hurried but my error allows me this one sentence more…at least.

A gentle breeze cools off my peripheries, though it’s now that I’d love a kilt, let some real aeration in.

A grandmother and grandchild spend this time conversing. They weren’t at that first stop.

People walk by, cycle past, move with the constant pulse of city life.

Sometimes, just barely, a moment like this enthralls, not the long protracted pen-stroke of a cafe pause, but the honest meanderings of a pensive, if meditative mind.

The bus arrives to break the last thought and as it rattles and squeaks along to its next port of call, doors slamming and banging, bells buzzing and fussing each time, I’m reminded of how easily it is to write when the object is not writing itself, but the mere restful state of observing.

 

Homesickness

Relax
Wherever I lay my...

 

Leaving Budapest for the summer, the buildings mock me. They stand resplendent in their morning veil as I glance back over my shoulder Buda-wards, not fearing to become a pillar of salt, merely to find hidden in the secrets of those spires and ornately tiled roofs, a sentiment, a love for this city.

Pest greets me as I cycle  through it, the hustle and bustle, the noise, the traffic, the bars.

I know it’s early but whoever came up with that silly notion of it being too early to have a beer! The postman crosses swords with the all-night reveller in a kocsma, both on dawn patrol.

Soon I’ll be home, to Ireland, my first home, but having made this a clear second, the other places in which I’ve resided shuffle for attention. They’ll get it in moments of reminiscence, but for now I must contend with the idea that for two months, while alleviating homesickness, I may also become homesick.

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