...And then there was gentle Friday, Rachmaninov blaring from a diminutive clock radio closely followed by the promise of sunshine for the first time in weeks.
Sunshine in Paris, ironically the title of the most fantastical of romance novels and yet instead sunshine in Paris, "s" as diminutive as my clock radio, simply implies that for once I wandered into work to silence and brightness, rather than the usual hard grey spilling in from the courtyard windows.
I wonder if it is a step in the maturation of the monstre or, as usual, a step in the degradation of the monstre's soul (always the connundrum) that I finally bit the proverbial lead projectile and installed a microsoft product, the messenger...
Because Tia begged me to.
This morning, she stumbling in drunk as I haven't been since high school, and twice as scared of life stretching in the lonely darkness ahead...
We talked of growing up and frightful things, and I went over the usual mantra - there is no courage without fear, no excellence without courage, and so being afraid was in fact the only way out of the mundane trap...
And then we talked of David and I, and how in certain lights in the bar last night when he was out drinking with them, he looked unbearably sad...
I remembered to almost a year ago, remembered talking of his mouth and fingers and stubble and hands on my waist, and in sudden, almost unbearable pang of distance, realizing just how far and out of touch he is from me, despite e-mails and the sharing of souls across the ether...
For a moment the distance was real, the faces he sees and places he goes so utterly cut off from me.
Enslaved by those pangs I looked back, read back to December of last year, and oh how sweetly those memories are weighing on my heart.
Tia was surprised that I spoke of being broken-hearted so openly in the messenger.
I was surprised that I'd hidden that part of myself so well, despite having started the resolutions to stop hiding behind a wall of toughness... A year ago.
But the wall is so much lower that perhaps a year was not time wasted, perhaps it was time spent building a better road, a dirt path of synchronicity, lined with cherry trees that blossom in the spring, and perfect for riding a bicycle along.
No more highways... Not on purpose anymore.
The fast lane was a fun time, but it belongs to another kind of person, and the monstre is abandoning that mask.