I changed my picture again. I changed it on MSN first, and someone said he liked it, so I thought I would change it here too. I only found it quite recently, in Facebook. It was taken in Paris in May by a Czech friend who put it on her Facebook page but somehow I missed it at the time – there were so many people posting so many photos from that trip. It was outside Sacre Coeur on Saturday evening, I was with Petra (Czech), Eduardo (Spain) and Arto (Finland), and we had just walked up through Montmartre. In the full picture, my elbow is resting on Edu’s back, and Arto is standing behind me – Petra, of course, took the picture. Later we walked back down and found a restaurant, the others came to meet us from the other parts of the city where they were scattered, and we had a final dinner together before flying off (or training, in my case at least) in our different directions the following day.
Actually, that’s not strictly true, because at least some of us had lunch the next day as well, a picnic on the Pont des Arts. I’d spent the morning on my own in the Latin Quarter, listening to the bells of Notre Dame and exploring Shakespeare & Company. Falling in love – in love with being myself, with Melinda, with detaching myself from the limitations which hold me back and stop me from finding my own way. I was still a little in love with someone else at that time – or not such a little (not anyone connected with Paris, BTW) – I didn’t realise then that it had just reached the point which was as good as it was ever going to get, but soon the process of detaching myself from him would begin, too.
And so I sat in a café with my notebook and listened to the bells and drank Sunday morning coffee and sunshine and people and magic. Bought a poster from the stalls on the Left Bank. And when I was ready, I met my friends outside the Louvre.
I guess I’ll always have Paris.
I went back to the start of this blog again last night. A sense of time folding and doubling back on itself, taking me back, and yet, I am so different now, I am not that woman any more, I have reinvented, recreated myself, I have seen myself at last through others’ eyes, others’ lenses, and I can let her go, that lonely, fearful woman, and stand alone. I have resolved the contradictions of Belinda and Melinda by truly becoming Melinda and acknowledging her strength and power. For now, at least.
‘It was late in December/The sky turned to snow/All around the day/Was going down slow./Night like a river,/Beginning to flow./I felt the beat of my mind go drifting into/Time Passages./Years go falling in the fading light./Time Passages/Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.’
The last train home? But where is home? Where will the train take me?