The metaphor remains the same

There was a distinct change in the air today.  The weather is hinting at what summer might bring, even before we've fully seen spring.  The scent of warmth greeted me as I walked in my flat.  That faint reminder of what the air is like when you don't need seven layers of clothing.  

I'm tracing my footsteps that brought me back from the brink.  How did I get as far as this?  The shift that occurred, and is still evolving between my old life and the one I now live, lies somewhere between the edge of the platform and the bookshop cafe back on Václavské Námĕstí.  I know I cannot take up residence in the bookshop cafe (hell, I haven't had the luxury of time to even go and have a coffee there) but the metaphor remains the same.  I was practically holding my head out over the tracks before, in the depths of winter that took hold so early in December and didn't stop till the beginning of February, but I seem to be on a tea-break now. 

Back in December I was listening incessantly to MC Solaar tracks, full of orchestral swells set against distorted guitar, followed by soaring but heart-wrenching BVs: "je veux partir d'ici, cette fois je te le dis, je ne veux plus de cette vie..emmenes-moi"  (roughly translated: "I want to leave, this time I'm telling you, I don't want anymore of this life, take me away")  And I remember trudging through slushy snow and being cold to the tip of my heart as much as my toes and barely being able to see somehow, it was all just too bleak.  I remember the fight against that grief, that searing cold front of emptiness and loss; the anguish, the sense of abandonment.  It was all there in the dark skies, the bitter cold, the barren surroundings and lifeless outlook.

And yet, in the days that followed the Bolero concert, there were moments of distraction, if not exactly hope.  And a few good conversations and even..laughter.  The day I walked back from my meet-ee's office, caught the metro and walked home, I listened to another track full of strings and guitars, but the line in it was "I just jumped out in the open, without knowing my parachute'll save me.  It's quiet and peaceful in this emotional nirvana blue."  And somehow I ended up at that Čajovna, a week or two later, hitting my principles against a brick wall because there was no escaping the fact that I knew I felt something and I also knew I couldn't go on without saying so.

But as we walked back, hand in hand through the late evening foggy streets of Prague I wondered what precise change had occurred? What did having someone's hand to hold really mean?  How was it that I had not had the conviction to hold his hand on the way there but on the way back, suddenly, I was walking with a fellow-traveller?  No longer an interested party, a new friend and flickering hope of an ally, but a companion.  A real and tangible one, walking with me.

As spring begins to grace us with her presence, or perhaps is merely hinting at her arrival in the fullness of time, I daren't hope for too much.  Perhaps, inspite of myself though, I shall savour the way it feels to be able to at least envisage the possibility of pleasure.  I shall trace the outline of the spectre of a future and delight in the comfort of being able to imagine if not the best, certainly the 'not-too-bad', whilst simultaneously preparing, as always and as every good English person should, for the worst.