the slow-down balcony

I stand on the balcony, a glass of water in my hand, listening idly to my neighbour chattering about her grandchildren... thinking vaguely about all the other things I could be doing with my precious day... The winter seemed endlessly grey and sunless, but when the spring sun finally arrives it blinds everything with its merciless brightness... I seem to spend half of the year longing for light and the remaining half squinting and fumbling for my sunglasses...

I feel, to my surprise, a languid contentment that shouldn't logically be there, as I look out over an empty back street, an eerily deserted prison yard, a quiet seafront promenade and the vast expanse of the bay...

Two ladies, out for a stroll along the street below, look up as the sound of my neighbour's voice carries down from the fourth floor balcony. The woman with the four chihuahuas walks by, expertly juggling her dog leashes. Someone drives his expensive Mercedes very slowly to avoid being rattled by the cobblestones. A pair of crows are constructing a nest in the still winter-bare linden tree. A couple take their bicycles out for the first time on newly ice-free streets. A thrush is searching the wet grass for last year's berries. Far away, there is the clanging noise from bridge construction work.

I should be in a hurry to make an excuse to my neighbour and go back inside to do something useful or at least fun. But, for someone who dreams of the electrifying chaos of New York avenues, I'm oddly bewitched by the quiet peace in deserted, small-town back streets. My heartrate slows down and I can't move...