Memory is a funny thing. From the oddest of connections flow images, sound and then emotions.
The light rail in San Jose isn't like any light rail I have been on in the past. The Hamilton platform is raised, the tracks are bridged over Hamilton and run alongside Bascom. The train comes up out of a tree-lined area in the evening as I wait for it to take me to the CalTrain station.
Even so, images of Holland, Utrecht to be exact where I spent time with Digital's Educational Services, have come to mind from the first evening I saw it. Last Monday morning, something similar. The train rises out of a tunnel, under the CalTrain station I imagine, before stopping at the platform.
Suddenly I was back in Europe. First Utrecht and then, with a glance at the overcast sky, Dublin.
Why Dublin? Perhaps because as I drove home on Sunday afternoon, from getting my glasses repaired, my journey took me past San Francisco airport. The big green shamrock on the tail of an Aer Lingus plane was right there, just off to the left of the highway.
And from there to the sound of the song, "Ar Éirinn Ní n-Eósainn Cé hí" (For Ireland I'll not tell her name). A slow, sad sound to this song. I wasn't even listening to it on my iPod, but there it was in my head.
So, early in the morning on a warm day late in September, waiting for the light rail in San Jose, California, I found myself unaccountably sad. Thinking of - well, nothing as it happens. Just feeling.
We are odd mixtures we people. Complex, interconnected - and a little random.
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