I was sitting in a movie theatre tonight when those two words floated into my brain.  For two-and-a-half months, they’d been silent.  The last time I wrote to you was in early August, a post about my Belgian friends Baziel and Olivia playing basketball in Toronto.

Strange.  I’ve had no desire to write.  I told myself that my recent travels to a golf tournament in Toronto and visits to San Francisco and New York City left me with precious little time to tap on the keys, but the truth was that I simply didn’t want to.  I may have had the occasional twinge of guilt about this in August, September and October, but virtually nothing.

I knew I’d write again but I was giving myself infinite space to do what drew me and not do what had no current oomph.  Pretty cool, actually, to be so kind to myself.  Right now, there’s a tiny smile on my face as I honour the person I’m continuing to morph into.

So … tonight.  I watched a documentary called Aquarela, which offered stunning visuals about the power of water.  Cars slipping under the ice during an early spring in Siberia.  Hurricane Somebody lashing the streets of Miami, leaving the trunks of some palm trees flat and others curving under the force of the gale.  A small sailboat crossing the Atlantic with its crew of two, riding the immense swells of the ocean.  (In August I threw up three times on a little boat on Lake Erie, and tonight I could imagine a fourth.)  Building-sized chunks of ice breaking off from the mother ship and bobbing like corks in the water, while sounds like gunshots filled the space.

Awesome stuff.  And yet for me such natural drama doesn’t hold a candle to looking at someone’s face, to gazing into their eyes.  I’m a mite biased that way.  Give me people every time.

316 words.  How about that?  I’m back.