I remember thinking a lot about the traffic signals of Dublin city while in college. And when I talk about the lights, I don’t just mean the loud one posted right outside my flat— the place I got because the previous tenant killed herself in what would become my bedroom. On the many nights I couldn’t sleep, I would listen to the slow blipping noise shift and assume a hurried pace as the red standing man turned to green and pedestrian traffic—both inebriated and imagined— could then cross Townsend Street to access the Seashell chipper with confidence. These days, on some nights here in my quiet neighborhood (no ghosts in this bedroom), I can still hear the noise of that signal echoing in my head.

But it was the greater collective of Dublin’s traffic lights that I would often reflect upon as I walked about. So many times I would bear witness to the constant color interplay on each corner of my designated city real estate. They were on routes that I knew best: those streets that took me from home to college and to work. By the time I left Dublin I grew sightless in traversing all of them.

Over the course of two years it was the hum of the traffic patterns that managed to press themselves into the furthest recesses of my brain. It would become a matter of me heading to Nassau Street and sighting the far end of South Leinster Street. The traffic at that time came from a couple different places, so it was your typical mishmash of a merge at city center. I knew how and when all the lights were timed without ever needing to consult them or the oncoming cars to determine whether it was advisable to cut a tangent. This navigation by internal diving rod only came to me after running the traps of that daily commute, literally dozens of times.

And now here in London, I’m a member of another city where I am largely pedestrian. As such I’ve got that same almost preternatural thing occurring the longer that I live here. This kind of ties in nicely with my last blog entry where I talked about what makes a place an eventual home. I have also mentioned many times that although I may never fall in love with a certain place where I’m living, I do still take each post code quite personally.  Here, it is no different.

Ultimately it’s about mastering a kind of second sight that makes a person feel settled in an alien environment. Feel at home. It’s not until I can fearlessly run my fingers through a place’s grit and grass that the stress levels in my prefrontal cortex start to abate. For this city, I think I might be at that point right now.

I wouldn’t say that I have solved London by any stretch, and indeed my naïveté with respect to the automotive rat’s nest may one day cause contact with one of those red double decker things. But at the same time, London isn’t someplace that fills me as much trepidation (or perhaps malaise is the right word) as it did late in 2015.

And a word about the public transport here. Sure, the decibel level of the 4pm schoolchildren may have me longing for a mandatory quiet car, but more than anything it’s the squealing sound of the tube on its tracks that makes me perk up and want to listen. Here, you really get the best sense for the vibrations that comprise transport for London. Depending on whether the sound is rising or falling, closer or farther away, the character profile of the rumbling lets me know whether I should dash for the turnstiles or stroll on at a leisurely clip to the Underground station. Like the stop and go of the lights in Dublin, as I navigate the rail networks of this city I no longer depend so much on my eyes for getting around.

So the best part about all this is that I’m really at peace with the borough I currently call home base. I’ve got a new rhythm handed to me and it’s one that I really enjoy studying. Like the crosswalk signal in Dublin, all of this is really just another sheet of music that I’m trying to master. One day, too, it will be added to the lager composition which is my little score of life. And with each new sheet that gets dropped in front of me, the challenge will remain exciting because I’ll never quite know what a place will sound like until I try it out. Judging by everything that has come before, I can’t wait to work out how the next bit is played.