on one hand, it's odd to feel like this, to feel so keenly this exquisite melancholy when i had been so happy before.

part of me wants to throw this off--this bewildering weight in my heart--but the other part of me thinks, i haven't written so beautifully for a long time now, and

whatever it is, don't we embrace each and every real and true thing that comes to us?

the glimpse of a blue sky, a clean breeze and once in a while, such a delicate edge pressing on your heart.

i feel.

i write.

how many chances do we get, to reinvent ourselves? an atlas of clouds (stolen, of course, such a beautiful phrase) held together by vapourish trails of an ego, a shifting kaleidescope of being?

now, blond, brunette or redhead. now, maiden, wife, crone. now, a giddy school girl, a wild child then this woman of the world?

in june of 1989, tiananmen happened. it's history, an event, i search my memory without success-- it's a blip on the narrative of my life. but my cut and dried history is someone else's memory. who paid for the bullet that killed a loved one?

who pays?

i had a band-aid on my little toe walking the streets of vina del mar. it was cold in boston where i came from, it was warm in chile where i was. i remember following the wind (pulling from decade old geographical knowledge) to find the ocean and i remember losing the band-aid when someone inadvertently stepped on my slippered foot, being terrified of contracting strange diseases and rushing to a pharmacy (farmacia) to buy a new box of them. on the way back to santiago, the conductor confirmed in halting english that i spoke no spanish and he had had such a look. amazement? incomprehension? curiosity? but i made it back to my hotel safe and sound and i will always wonder at the bravado i had then, riding metros in strange cities where i knew not a word of their language.

courage, is the currency of the world.

the false kind. the reckless kind. the weighty kind.

it takes a lot of courage now, because i was always so brilliant at self-deception. once the truth is obfuscated, really, who can pull out the salt from the sea? i don't know that i love this; i don't know that i hate it. i know that i must love what i do to get through.

so i brave the hard tour. i brave what i need to say to myself. i brave not being truthful to myself. i brave the consequences of being truthful to myself.

which is this, i can't truly love this, but let's simulate and dissimulate.

i used to write so beautifully.

if this set up had a title i would call it, "walking in the rain"

because i did, and now i'm sitting in wet clothes, wrapped in a towel, writing.

how often do we get to take a walk in the rain?

the waves break onto the shore, the rain cracks into little crowns on the pavement--this is broken, this is beautiful.

the truth is, this is not the best place for me. i once said, i enjoy it, i enjoy because i would never have to do it again--i enjoy it the way i enjoy something i never have to do again.

because i am cerebral and i was always the girl who would walk in the rain and feel the sting of biting cold raindrops on her skin. i was never the supersonic buzz that i am now.

in out stealing horses, per peterson said, i always dreamt of being in a place like this, even when i was lucky, even when i was happy. where do i want to be, in my heart of hearts?

and i had so often prided myself on having all these things coveted by others so easily, so fortuitously it's almost unbecoming of fate to be quite so partial to me.

but the shadowed side of fortune is how i never got to really ask, do i want this?

i'm pulling all these out of me. i'm pulling the tenacity, the fortitude, the good cheer, everything that i was not, i'm pulling out of this little self. reach deep, run far, run further. run.

but i'm also on a cusp, on a verge, i want to have the space to teeter, to fall, to make a mess of things and clear it all up. i want silence and solitude and to live life in mute, for a while.

i want to walk in the rain and not have people asking, are you all right or to offer to share an umbrella with me. because sometimes, we just want to be out there with the winds and in the cold and remember that we don't have to be quite so perfect to be perfect.

perhaps being physically ill puts you in a contemplative and evaluative mood that's harder to reach when you're feeling invincible. ironic? yes. welcomed? i don't know.

they've been so good at what they do that i am completely taken. i want all that.

but on such days, i also want something entirely different.

i want to walk in the rain.