Sometimes I tend to ask myself: What makes me take certain decisions? The ones that lead me to take certain actions, leaving the consideration of the result completely up to unforeseeable circumstances.
Passion! – Is an answer that comes to my mind, logical enough, when you think about it. To me, passion is the part of my brain that is the oldest and most rational, sometimes annoying but still usually quite worth listening to, that whispers to me.
Passion can be like a seemingly intangible cloth floating in the air, and yet it’s merely this ephemeral worm drifting aimlessly in the realms of our vision. What is its cause? Should it be grounded in the concrete of logic, so that you can be sure what’s built on it, is not going to fall apart? Or is passion vice versa – the earthquake of the heart that shakes and breaks all logic and simply doesn’t care? I tend to believe it’s both. And also – much more. And only the passion for knowledge can provide the answers of what it is and in what shapes it can occur. Should I follow my passion? Why not! Just as long as I don’t expect anything else from it apart from the freedom of joy to let myself into it.
Just a few months ago I was allowed to choose where I would like to go for a short-term job position. Out from all 6 places given to choose from I chose Nottingham. And asked to name any reason why I would simply say: “Because it has tramways.”
Since I was a kid, a city with trams running the streets was something exotic, striking and awe inspiring to me. The first time I travelled abroad I went to Latvia, and in Riga I saw trams. It did not fit in my little head how these vehicles that barely connected bigger cities even in Lithuania, were in vast numbers in Riga – passing through wherever I turned my head? Taking one was pure happiness. And that feeling persisted, doubtfully it will ever fade to be honest. So essentially Nottingham was in itself a rational choice to me, even though I just followed my passion.
A random, fleeting joy to go to a place where I can admiringly watch trams crossing the streets, walk their tracks that reflect the light going up the windy hills and down the road, I even submit to following them with my eyes closed while returning home. I step out, nearing my place on foot. But just listen to the silence that is left behind the receding tramway! Silence that rustles within the trembling branches of the trees, the silence that ricochets in the shape of raindrops from a trembling roof of a bus stop, silence that continues on in squeaking hinges of the gate and hits the main chord once the house door closes behind me.
The whole journey home is wrapped in this harmony of silence that strings out like a farewell cloth from a fading vehicle, just like this intangible vision of passion whirling like good weather in the mesmerising skies of mundanity. There is plenty of it in the drawers among jangling cutlery and I even accommodate myself next to it on the second deck of the bus when I choose to take one to go to town. Silence is always in and around me while I’m listening and never too far away when I’m talking. I wake up hearing it at 6am, just before the rain, when the rays of dawning sun hit my eyelids with the brightest orange, and I always fall asleep to it in the depths of my duvet. Silence is bliss. And the blissful thing about it is where the main ingredient of good silence lies about – the peace it holds within.
There are 2 types of silence basically: one that spreads, unfolds and blossoms most celestially in peace, and the one that prevails in the shadow of emptiness like a haunting ghost behind your back that pants about the fears and insecurities and is never a real silence – it’s a continuous buzz in your ears, crossing your brain and blocking the ability to harness senses and insight, transmitting peace in every detail. Switch the buzz into the flight mode and activate the senses to hear and feel the vibes of silence spreading all around and within me – this is what I got from following my passion. Let it be for the trams.
