I have been wandering around and reading the various Diaryland entries and I can’t help but notice that this is a predominantly female place. I am one of the few males here. Weird. I wonder why men don’t really feel the need to share their lives?

Last year I was in Liverpool. I actually had gone to Dublin to meet up with my girlfriend who was alread there on vacation but then she dumped me. After that I went to Liverpool. She tagged along but then left for Dublin again. We took a cab to the ship that was taking her back to Dublin and the taxi driver was amazing. He had this incredible sense of the history of the place and started telling us about how “that wall was built by Napoleonic prisoners of war” and “Melville writes about that statue in his book Redburn”. After I said goodbye to Tricia and resolved to be alone for the next week, he took me on a free tour of the city. He showed me the former Confedarate Embassy from Civil War times. He parked the cab right in the courtyard and told me about how 150 years ago, well-heeled gentlemen and ladies would pull their coaches into this very spot. He showed me the brickwork and explained how it could be used to tell the age of the buildings. Tricia got his email address before she left. She never gave it to me. Well, when I got home I bought Redburn. I read it. I found a story that reminded me of me, seperated 100 years in time from my current self and wandering around the same city I had just returned home from. I thought of Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five coming unstuck in time and briefly toyed with the idea that Redburn really was me, that I was reliving something I had lived before. There is so much truth in the recording of the events of peoples lives. It can reach into the future and still touch others. The fact that most people don’t bother trying to do that makes me sad.

More From Ryan Sutter

RyanSutter has content marketing with Arkayne Socialize.

Related posts