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ear G,
I loved you and I love still. Love the way you let people feel here and be found. Love the way you are not so harsh on your souls like the dark, English cities. Love the small, moss-lined tropical maze hidden in the Botanics, and grocers near rivers. Love your foliage and your College of Building and Printing building.
Love odd men with high blood pressure and green anoraks trying to give away free tickets to the cinema. Love your cyclists and lanes.
There are the things, then the things you do, then how it feels.
I love you the way you are. It is solely because of the way you are that I love you and it is also the case that I love what I experience. If you want to love somewhere try living there. It is easier to dislove when not around it. Cities are full of luck; full of occurrences and are mainly lovely because people live in them.
I love the lighting in the Variety; the view at Tchai Ovna. Yesterday I saw a boy in a tall, darkened window above a bus stop, swaying side to side inside the lace curtain. wearing it. It could have been anywhere. I couldn‘t have been. It is a totally Glaswegian thing to happen, though only if you notice it. Otherwise it didn’t happen for you. And it wouldn’t then be a Glaswegian thing.
I love the elvised fence post that lets me into the park at the nearest point. Oh, you let people have these things. Oh, and yes your buildings: they are merchant massive and there‘s plenty of them. Let’s see more tree houses, come on. Could they not be legalised and have dwellers living below the trees too? Let all parks be wild, wee villages in the city with the chance of festival at all times.
How do love 6
Riverbanks, festivals stemming from tree houses and an all-pervading optimistic air: meandering Glasgow wordsmith Phil Kay opens his heart to the city he calls homely.
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There is not change, just incorporation of the new. And people produce architecture and they make fantastic passes in the five per side soccer. It is easy to love you with your friendly soul and your plenty sky. It seems a random event, this love, and that is exactly what makes it true. Only by having the specific example do we see anything.
Love: bestow one’s affections on, be enamoured, enraptured, smitten by.
I am smitten by your riverbanks, enamoured with good ice- cream and enraptured by playparks. I bestow my affections on the happenings of your movements. You provide friendship. What all the tales of love are hinting at. It has to be more important that you feel first the love, then actions can occur.
I love you. Yes you, and only you, most highly and above all others because you are the one I am in. I want to go and live by the sea, though, and visit the city. It is as you imagine: just upside down; so, not that I don’t love you, because I want to leave, just that I do. What we achieved together was because of who we were together. It seems a bit daft to be at odds with parts of each other when the whole of what we were made us tremendous. I loved you and found you magically beautiful every time I saw you; more lovely than any other. I went to other cities. I always lived here.
I love the stars above you and the way fingers get warm again in pockets these days. I love the skaters and the optimistic air.
16 THE LIST 5—19 Feb 2004