The dusk station

Dusk station

Still it's cold. Scent of not long after the rain, the Irish breeze whistling in harshly off the unseen river. I enter the dusk station, mask on, one of just a few now. At first the feeling is faint, a dull annoyance at the re-gathering of life around me, but then as each train pulls in, and the chaotic stream of bodies rushes onto the platforms, filling those spaces with some lost sense of urgency, I'm overwhelmed by a flooding uneasiness. At once I'm struck by a consuming sadness. It's so poignant I'm surprised it doesn't physically split me in two. Strike me right down.

What are all these things? The culmination of two years, the exploding and changing sensations, some known now and others eternally unfamiliar. Stored-up contradictions hit me as a blast. Hope and panic. And I know, made clear with this communal slap, that I became used to my gloomy trudge through solemn streets, I'd normalised the creeping and strangely addictive emptiness that on some level had finally begun to mirror a longing that was housed in my soul from earlier. The surprise way of life over time evolved into the way of life, the crutch.

This thronging station appears to have forgotten all that. It wants to get on with it. It doesn't care that I crave my cocoon. Because not yet have I tapped into a happiness that I require to propel myself into the joyous, unrestricted future and all the life-embellishing affirmations that could be possible there. A return to victories needs the notion that they were ever possible. I cannot currently believe in the truth of that, or that I will go back to something I had before; the precise reasons don't matter, and I cannot give eveidence, it's just my instinct.

The moment normality fell in March 2020, and the main risk from the alien disease loomed, another effect came. Of course the situation was awful, unwanted. But an unintended benefit materialised too, and I swam into it wholeheartedly. What I was presented with at once was, finally, a chance to pause and reflect on life that had jolted forwards and in snaking routes throughout the decade. Space to asses that portion when it had been impossible to think properly and analyse: there thoughts had remained a whirlwind, events unrelenting, and there was always another one. Miraculously though, as the city stopped, flashbacks of life and love successes blossomed, some, naturally, imagined - I pored over agonisingly false histories and enjoyed a re-writing for all the near misses. Self-indulgent airbrushing. Giant indulgences to match moments frozen into singularity. Magical closure. And an excuse to think and keep thinking.

I was in it. It enveloped me. Now the clearness of the after-time affords a view that casts its peculiarity into sharp focus. Lisbon and Liverpool. Very different lockdowns. The spring lockdown. An autumn lockdown. The interminable winter lockdown. And through them as the emotional feeling turned massive, forever lots of faces. No, not quite. Half-faces, just bewildered eyes. Everyone and no-one drifting through unreal days. But reassurance by repetition and fast-acting familiarity. My memory brings back surreal images. Nocturnal pavements, eerie neighbourhoods through which guardian angels softly treaded. I immediately pinned all my hopes on those figures who like me seemed to gain whatever solace they could in the quiet outsides where everything felt so distant and dreamlike.

Here in the present I look back on in high definition a sense of solidarity that already feels unlikely as the moments recede. That city-wide reaction propelled by the growing enormity of the thing. Here too I take stock of what will in time solidify into mass grief. On the purely unselfish level, I think of those affected health-wise, taken by this disease - aside from the various societal changes created by it - and acknowledge that my reticence is fuelled by the reality that processing all this negativity and horror will take time, even for the bystanders, those said to be only slightly grazed by some form of loss. But this wasn't a far-off, mediated disaster. To some degree we were all inside it this time.

I admit though that my own anxiety and self-preservation is more prominent in importance. Will I ever be able to keep tight hold of the ephemeral soulful meaning I spied during that black wilderness? I long for the dreams sparked there to gleam with some endurance, even though I also concede that they were at least 95% gone even then. And it's not simply those of course, the highly personal ruminations. But also brittle opportunities for re-thought simple ways to live. This was a lucky chance to alter actions and depart from the kamikaze, self-centred non-stop that had somehow become essential for us all. And for a stretch it appeared as though the basis of those ideas might stick.

But as the narrative with great force surges back, encapsulated by my nervy moments in the buzzing night station, I'm punctured by the sense that time, even after all this extreme time, will be victorious, never in stasis. Moods rebound. People forget. Our big quest holds sway. Yet there is still that nagging sensation that I haven't pinpointed what I want. What exactly is it that I should be doing? At least when everything was closed I didn't need to decide, no-one had to, and I could keep pushing those decisions into the future.

So the way forwards, I gulp, is to address with boldness a mix of those anxieties. My own uncertainty and the potentially fumbled re-analysis of the wider mindset, the fresh attack. If I can grasp even a glimmer that I, we can gain something everlasting, it will fill me with hope, and I will embrace more wholeheartedly the onrushing gladness that I'm petrified I should but will struggle to bask in during the eventual, late-blooming spring.