Solitude

Under water in the hotel bath, dark room. I need to dunk under. And now I am free, working limbs, twisting through the ache of mid-life. In the dark, hard to know what's above and what's below - a favorite childhood practice. I find my way back to the middle of that watery transition tonight.

In a nice Portugese/Italian restaurant, strange town, I read my book and after an hour of appearing all under wraps, I laugh out loud to myself, too hard, dipping a spoon into a glass of tirumisu. Yes, a glass. It should hold a Cosmopoitan, even the waiter is surprised, "Oh, I guess he wants to serve it in this tonight, enjoy." I can't help it - I'm reading about a woman who leaves for Italy after a horrible divorce. She writes in a hilarious, self-depracating, thoughtful way about her pathetic love life. A glass of wine later and I crack up at every line. I know in a few chapters she will go to India, and I discover early on in the book, that she will spend a few months studying under my teacher.

I eat high falutent tortellini as she writes about eating pasta in Rome, and how she possibly gutted an entire marriage for the chance to sit on the floor of an apartment, facing a plate of perfectly boiled eggs, olives, smoked salmon, and cheese. She looks at it for a moment, wonders if she should lament her loss, then eats every single bite and declares to herself, "Yep, for this, it's worth it."

My small slice of fantasy. Woo-hoo, alone for the weekend, away from everything that identifies who I am in the world. And so, I'm just laying here....flat. Pushing the covers back on an early night.

Three ten hour days of essential oil training. Dense. Wonderful, magically conscious, intelligent plant blood.

Wiped out and dreaming to music. How very strange to release myself from the roles of home.