The Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Edinburgh started off feeling a little like an alternative reality. Like in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy transforms her reality on the farm into characters in her dream - everyone reminded me of someone back home. More interestingly, they didn't always stay the same person, but they'd morph into someone else. Within a day, they could go from reminding me so strongly of one person to the spitting image of someone completely different. Maybe it was that strange sense of familiarity that made me feel so immediately drawn to some of them. But within a few days they morphed again - now when I saw them, I saw each person for themselves. And that's when they stopped being 'them' and we started being 'us'.

And this happened remarkably quickly. One day we were all making small talk, just trying to remember each others' names then suddenly I realised that by lunchtime I already missed the faces I hadn't seen yet that day.

I wish I had words to write about each and every person who came to mean so much to me over my month in Edinburgh. I wish you could have known them like I did. I can't write anything about them individually - not yet. I'm afraid that if I do, my memory of them will deteriorate into just words on a page - like fictitious characters - because I do not have the talent to portray them justly. I'll romanticise, hyperbolise, sentimentalise. And no one likes sentimental word vomit. All that needs to be said right now is that I miss them. I miss Zoo Venues. I miss the festival. I miss August 2010 so much that my heart is actually aching just thinking about it.

Soon, I promise, I will write about the people I met, the shows I saw, the work I did, the places I went. But for now, I'm just going to leave it here. Probably because of aforementioned heartache.