emotional-landscapes
I have tagged 1 blog post with emotional-landscapes:
Painting Oslo Grey: A Personal Journey through the Frozen Moods of the City
Every day I travel the veins of Oslo, carrying me from the quiet outskirts into the thrumming heart of this city. My city. Today, with the promise of warmth a cruel joke on the nibbling 4-degree wind outside, I decided to spend my commute dwelling on my favourite spots in this landscape; the ones that spark joy even when joy doesn't spark me. I must admit that my enthusiasm for them doesn't shine too brightly this morning. Perhaps it's the weather, or the cryptic news article staring blankly at me from the screen, an empty canvas disguised as information—more emptiness to fill the already overflowing void.
The first place that comes to mind is our local café, affectionately known among residents as the beating heart of our community. Its charismatic décor usually invites the warmth of sunflower fields into my mundane greys. However, as I gaze out of the train window at monotonous landscapes blighted by the bitter cold, I am compelled to acknowledge that today my heart isn't in it. The café may echo with laughter and the comforting hum of espresso machines, but I wouldn't be able to hear the melody through my melancholy today.
Then there's the library. An island of knowledge in the grey swirling sea of the city. Rows upon rows of carefully lined books, their spines rigid from a mixture of age and reverence, their wisdom ready to be devoured by avid minds. Yet the thought of perusing those aisles today seems as uninspiring as the troublesome HTML tag staring at me from my device's screen.
Despite the brooding clouds, the Botanical Gardens usually bring a smile to my face. Bursting with vibrant greens and reds, the symphony of colours is a painter's dream. The songbird's melodies cradle the morning chill, forcing a bloom despite the cold. However, today, the blooms appear to be frozen in time, the songs echo in forgotten corners. It seems my misery extends further than my own atmosphere, infecting even the most resilient flora.
The final stop of this gloom-filled tour—my university. Oslo's intellectual workshop, usually gilded with hope and ambition, appears joylessly grey, matching the sombre winter sky. The frigid hands of the oslofjord weave a palpable dread into the morning fog, rendering the familiar structures foreign.
These places, my favourite corners of this cold, dreary city, are today nothing more than bricks and mortar, concrete and rust. They are just as cold and undulating as the 4-degree air outside.
Our emotional landscapes paint the physical ones. After all, the lens we view our cities through is in us, more than any external influence. Just like this uninformative news article, my city today is a void—an HTML tag without content. Perhaps the morning frosts will thaw and give way to the sun soon, until then, I remain in this weighted blanket of numbness.