It was so cold in the old city of Prague on the Sunday afternoon I took this photo that it makes me shiver to remember it, but walking through the narrow, winding streets, turning a corner and coming upon someone playing a violin was like being in a fairytale. And every day, I went out into winter with the friend I was visiting — bundled, layered, walking and taking the tram, watching my breath make clouds in the air, stopping for wine or coffee, unlayering, bundling back up, taking photos of snow falling. I leaned into the cold, accepted it, lived it. Today at home in Charleston, it’s 48 degrees, nothing approaching that week in Prague, but I am flinching from the cold, recoiling, running home to escape it. Instead of walking through my neighborhood or in the downtown city streets, I layer on pajamas, fuzzy socks, a long-sleeved tshirt under an old cashmere sweater. If I were in a fairytale, it would be about a woman who turns into a bear at the first frost. When Persephone goes underground and everything on earth is waiting and storing energy for the spring, why can’t I embrace all the lovely bare, spare planes of her winter face? Why don’t I expect a violinist around every corner in my own hometown?
It’s amazing how little we “live in the moment” when we are in our everyday surroundings. (Ba)
For two years in Belgium, I didn’t have a car. Belgium, known for the howling wind off the North Sea and near constant gray skies and rain. I walked and rode and carried my groceries for miles and saw the world up close.
Back in America, I vowed to live a little like a European, but quickly reverted to circling the parking lot at the Supercenter, looking for the closest parking space to the door.
I think our minds are more open to magic when we’re visiting someplace magical. The trick for me is to remember to see magic in the everyday moments.
your postings are like poetry
please meet me in prague tomorrow. i could use a walk and some fresh air.
xxx
wouldn’t it be great to just step into that photo and hear the music on the wind?