Ode to Cork
5 years in Cork and this little village in the south of Ireland has attracted and fixed me like a powerful magnet... Three years after I left, Cork is still in my blood, my heart and my soul, filling me with a nostalgic feeling due to not being able to find same way of life anywhere since.. Yes I didn't travel the whole world and tried all cities since but I am persuaded that Cork is reuniting the magic criterias to live and experiment rich moments and encounter wonderful people.
This is what happened to me in those five years. From 3 to 6 months, to one year that become quickly five years. Everything just came naturally and with spontaneity. From one house to another, from one job to another, in each I have met amazing persons who become very close and valued friends. Through happiness and pain, through anger and disappointment, through heart breaking and dispute, through crying and laughing, relationship were born, grew up, developed, enriched, fluctuated.
In the darkness of the many Cork pubs and the foam of all those beers drank, we have played all sort of games, danced wildly, listened beautiful music, sang, debated, argued, screamed, titubated, broke glasses, kissed... For good and for worse...
Cork is my first love story. Thanks for her (oh yeah I love the romantic of giving gender to objects: la ville), I lived a second birth, experienced a crazy teenager time where I have done stupid and childish things, drank to unconsciousness to the edge of destruction, and finally became an engaged woman which brought me the man of my life and the love of my life. I have realised recently that through this second birth, english has become my mother tongue in which I feel so much more at ease than in french. And this is because Cork has allowed me to free my deeper self and accept who I was.
Nowhere else I could find this sense of community that I found here, the solidarity between generation, classes, origins, the presence of music that filled all spaces, the engagement of people for their environment and their culture..
Special dedicace to the English Market where I worked in 3 different positions and which printed a special feeling inside me.
Cork is and will stay my home. Thank you
