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.

Bolero: A tale of the night of 18th January 2011

It's been over four months since I first got here and I've made, perhaps, one friend.  A fortnightly coffee friend.  But tonight I'm out at a concert, a first full orchestra concert in Prague, a first evening out in central Prague since moving here and a first social occasion with one of my "meet-ees".  

I'd known ahead of time about the Dvořák and the Mozart (I was looking forward to the former, not so much the latter) and we were sitting in our surprisingly positioned, dead-centre seats.  He handed me the programme, to read either in Czech or German. German still being the easier for me to understand, unfortunately.  But there's no linguistic skill required to read that the final piece in the programme is Ravel's 'Bolero'.  

It is a very ambivalent feeling, the like of which I'm not sure I've ever felt, to know that I am trapped here to listen to a live orchestra play a series of pieces, culminating in Bolero.  Why must it be Bolero and why here?  Why now?  Of all the pieces I've always wanted to hear live, Bolero has to be in my top 5.  And yet now is such a searingly painful time to inadvertently run into it.  Why must it be forced upon me like this?

I know I'm going to have to go through with it.  I also know there is no way I'll be able to get through it without crying.  A piece my former partner, the only partner of my whole life, used to collect numerous performances of on CD.  (I had helped him to acquire more.)  But having left my musician-life behind, having had to come here as my only means of living alone, having had to accept that he'd moved on to someone better suited to him and while the isolation and longing for a true friend is beginning to fully burn away at my insides, I am being expected to survive this?

My poor 'meet-ee'!  What is he to think?  What will he do if he sees the tears that will inevitably pour down my cheeks?

As the piece begins, I am already on the verge of tears due to my acute sense of entrapment in this.  I try to see it for the wonderful, extraordinary experience it is, and watch and listen like a conductor, while I tap my foot along with the tempo and look to see which beats the cellos are doing their pizzicati on.  I distract myself with trying to sense when the double basses will join in and I compare the beats they play, when they do, with the violins.  Some of these come in and out of playing over a number of permutations of the main motif.

But once the strings are all bowing their notes, I feel my life is being reflected in the unstoppable build-up to a finale I cannot escape.  It's like watching all the things I have lost over the last five years and seeing each and every bit in sharp, mocking detail, knowing the outcome of every precise turn of the dagger in my heart.  I feel like someone has purposely placed me here for some kind of Orwellian punishment.

However, as the final stage begins with the rupture of the main motif into the high note and following distorted melody, I feel almost delirious to hear it go through its mutations to its inevitable end, but wish I could end along with it.  Couldn't it simply make me expire with the last note?  It twists and turns to the conclusion I know so well and I count along with the beat how many bars it is until the final discordant notes and ultimate percussive full-stop.

And at that full-stop, the audience applauds and I begin my 'mopping-up and concealment act' with tissues and the back of my hand and hope that the pain of this will never be with me again.  Unless it is prepared to do a deal with me to promise that next time it will ensure my ultimate demise as certainly as the proud bow of the conductor and the orchestra's shuffling exit from the stage.