in-love-fallings, part four

When I first fell in love with...

* seafood: at my first taste of a seafood platter in a candle-lit Irish restaurant.


* the subway: on my first real adventure abroad, when I dove into the cavernous, hot, exciting labyrinth that is the London Underground. Ancient, haunted, and felt like the heart of the world.

* corridors: working in a busy hotel and sometimes escaping the chaos of the reception area to walk the mostly empty, silent corridors upstairs. Hundreds of doors on each side, each leading to a room with its own set of stories. Like the Wood Between The Worlds in C.S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles. Now I have a recurring dream of corridors like these: wandering them, searching for something, maybe lost but never frightened - instead excited, longing for adventure and love. Sometimes they are twisted, winding corridors in an attic, more like paths in an ancient fairytale forest. Sometimes they are broad, made of concrete and branching off into infinity, with metal doors that slam shut with a heavy, threatening clang behind you, like something you would expect in the dungeons of KGB headquarters in the 1970s. They are always endless.

* birdsong: the first time the world felt awful and the chirping of a little feathery thing in a tree cheered me up. Or when I heard the mighty trumpeting of cranes echo for miles. Or when I was homesick in a foreign country and heard a familiar twitter.

* soundtracks of musicals: when I found that there are songs about other things than love and "I want you baby". As a lover of unusual words, I discovered musicals. Where else can you find strange subjects, humour, deep drama and a wide variety of musical genres, sometimes all in one song? My first find wasn't even a classic one but the animated movie The Lion King. By the time Prince of Egypt came along, I was hooked. For unusual words, see for example the list of ancient Egyptian gods in "You're Playing With The Big Boys Now". I was transfixed by "The Plagues" where Moses is grieving and Pharaoh is being difficult while God, coming to the rescue of his people, is thundering down destruction: "I send my scourge, I send my sword - thus saith the Lord, let my people go".