December 14th: Edinburgh

When you've been stolen, heart and soul, by a city, you notice its indefinites and its definites, its parameters define themselves and trends become so starkly apparent you can hardly believe you didn't appreciate them sooner. You try to remember the city when you arrived, but cannot. The roads that are your roads were nothing but grey cobbles and glinting ice crystals, the potential of your life when you arrived in the city is hardly comparable to the life you live now. It is your life. You built it, you decided who would be allowed to live in it with you, and who would not. You wrote this life, and it is yours. Your cobbles. Your skylines. Nothing can take this world from you, and you'll fight tooth and tongue to keep it. You share these streets these buildings these bricks with half a million locals and half a million tourists, but that doesn't detract from it being yours. It is yours. All yours. Always yours. 

My city belongs to writers and workers, speciality coffee companies and people who can't differentiate between an americano and batch. We live in our microcosm where we rule and are ruled. It is wet and it is cold and smells like salt and rain, but it is Edinburgh and it is ours, it is mine. 

Perhaps I'm feeling over sentimental. No, I am definitely feeling over sentimental. After much research I found a gem on my doorstep and now, whim away, I sit in Baba Budan watching cars chug over the lines of cobbles, I watch the clouds frame the great and complicated structures on Calton Hill and everything is wonderful. Christmas in Edinburgh is beautiful. The sun sets at 3:30pm, turning the sky a kissed purple before sinking and plunging the city into a preemptive darkness. And the lights shine. Princes Street glints from shop windows, the cries and laughs from the Christmas Markets bracketing the ice crystals on the side walk. The Castle at the top of the mile glows brightly against the deep blue of the Edinburgh night. Buses pass. People are wrapped in coats and jumpers and scarves and gloves, hot cider clutched desperately before excited lips. It is sweet and warm and tastes like Christmas in Edinburgh. Against happy pedestrians flitting in and out of shops, disgruntled locals cursing the markets whine in the corners. It is beautiful. St Andrews Square has been overrun and an ice rink stands in it's place. Things whorl and shine. Mulled wine and hot cider. Hot dogs and cotton candy. 

This is my city, it isn't perfect. Gales of cigarette butts and polystyrene flood the streets, attacking our homeless men and women who bundle against the cruel cold asking for our spare change to turn life on that pin it spins on. 

Edinburgh isn't perfect, but it's mine. It is a dynamic city where no two moments are the same. Cosmopolitanism is Edinburgh's spirit and soul, shops and bars filled with the Scottish, the Australians, the Swedish, the Kenyan, the Chinese. Edinburgh is home to so many. Edinburgh is home and it's ours.