48 Hours

2 days isn’t a very long time.

Yet, to think in terms of conventional chronology, and the otherwise surreptitious brevity, is precisely that which deceives. After the equivalent of say, 2 working days, you expect to come back to, well, maybe Friday deadlines. Or the weekend. Or something equally predictable. Routine that hasn’t changed; routine that you can count on. Things that stay the same.

Truth is, for the most part, they do. It’s only the eyes we see them with, that have changed.

London will never be the same again.

London will be as it has always been. Bustling cosmopolitan tourist hub, city of beautiful old buildings (since the Great Fire of 1666, anyway). My memory of the city, however, will now flash back to me with renewed eyes, holding for me a very different significance.

Like Chinatown. And how-to-use-chopsticks lessons, for the shao ya tang mian.

Like wandering all over Covent Garden, enthralled by all the sights and sounds of the colourful markets – no, really – just distracted worrying about our flights (with enough pay phone calls to last the rest of the year). And by that street performer who kept bagging out that American guy, and who just couldn't quite get his act together.

She looks like she’s looking at a dove in a tree… that just pooped.

Like that whimsical seafood lunch, where we somehow started musing about the path ahead; career, life, love, and all that jazz… whet all the more by that gorgeous garlic butter, and bread. Of course, the moments following that are now a floaty haze of silly giggles to me, thanks to my embarrassing choice of going the one Chardonnay (– or was it? I can’t remember now.) Which I know was priceless, to you. It was anything but, to me. *face palm*

2 kids, 1 dog, and a Sony television set, huh.

Like walking through the Frida Kahlo, which just blew us both away. She’s now my favourite artist, by the way. For reasons of course, purely artistic, and politik – not symbolic. To be ironic. [Sic].

Just a li’l bit.

Like walking for ever, along the Thames, in our accustomed stream-of-consciousness rambologue which seemed to pass off, pretty well, for conversation. And the path, lined with trees that had blue baubles on them, despite Christmas being 4 months away. And… that moment.

Like how my vulnerabilities led to our first ‘fight’(!), on the way to Heathrow – for the last time. Not that I really put up one, ever. But that’s not the point.

Because this image… will become a ghost in time.

***
It’s Monday now, and – impossibly – an entire week since. The contrast of this ‘reality’ of regularity and clockwork whizzing past all around me, while I – almost in defiant disbelief – remain suspended in mid-air, is an excruciating reminder that those 48 hours weren’t, well, inserted into memory by dream or experimentation.

As I step into the shower, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I step closer to the mirror and I swear, I can see – *shock horror* – lines around my eyes. (Oh, the stealthy crevices of time.) And yet, I take a step back, and notice an odd, vague, effervescence in them – there’s a strange openness about them that almost carries a certain sort of… vigour.

To anyone else, my eyes probably look no different than they did 3 weeks ago. For me, though, something’s definitely changed.