part one: last night

I want to tell you a story about a woman half way around the world. This woman remembers her childhood like it was yesterday. She remembers every detail and the way the light angled through the rooms. She remembers staring in the mirrors and playing for hours alone. Her hands imitating the ones she used to see only a few years earlier. The hands that beckoned her at night. The pale gloved hands that always came into view in the south east corner of her room. Under the shelves, floating above the red carpet, while she blinked on the edge of fear but she accepted them, mesmerized and she knew she wasn't dreaming.

These hands came every night, motioning to her, "come here... come here... ." If you close your eyes you might be able to see them now.

She kept her eyes open, just watching them as if in a trance.

"come here.... come here..."

This feels familiar to the man half way around the world, somewhere in his mind, in a house, in a bedroom from his past. He stays put, he watches the window and slowly he remembers...

part two: this morning

She wakes in the dark but three hours later than usual. It was the ocean of wind that kept her lulled in her cocoon of blankets. This is the last day of 2010, and the windows are wide open and a flash of warm lightning brightens the darkness. It feels like April, the wind chimes are clanging continually.

She sits in the glow of the computer, while Patsy Cline plays low in the background from the turntable behind her. She came here with another story in mind, but the wind made her change course. This is a nostalgic wind that pulls at her heart, making her want to think and do big things. Reminding her of her past that truthfully is never far behind. It also propels her into the future.

If you were here sitting in the dark listening to this wind you would understand. Your heart might race with anticipation of what is to come, of all the things you could create if this wind never let up.

It feels like there are still leaves on the trees due to the roar. The wind is threading through the spokes of the skeletal limbs, whipping them back and forth creating this ocean. A heavy rain falls and a clap of thunder forms in the distance.

This is not the last day of December, this is clearly a snap shot from the future. This is tornado season. Patsy Cline's voice radiates from the darkness once more... "you walk by and I fall to pieces."

Perhaps it is time to shut the windows....

x.