As I look out at the bleached colours around my back yard, the pool full of snow, branches on the trees heavy with ice, glazed as though dipped in glass - there’s a mirror shine on the surface of the snow – I think of the state I’m in.

I’m out of work, trying to score the odd contract. I’m out of friends. They’re all gone or going – some, I’m not sure why. My place in the city is being sold out from under me. And I spend most of my time alone, not seeming to be able to connect with anyone. I’m trying to stay active. I’m involved with a lot of activity but not with people. It’s not just my shyness, surely.

I’m thinking about winter, this interminable winter. I’m thinking how my country has become winter, shutting itself away from everyone else, shunning attention. Mon pays, c’est l’hiver.

Then I think of Cali, shut away in its own way but warm and friendly and open, even with the turmoil down there, open and alive. I think of my friends there and how I’d love to be with them again. I want to bathe in that warmth – of people and climate. I want to sit under the palm tree by the pool at our hotel again. That hotel that’s built like a small Mediterranean town with it’s hallways and stairways and atriums.

And I think of Blu. I think that there’s something terribly wrong and I don’t know what it is and, whatever it is, I want to take it away from her. But then, I have to let her go too, just like the others, because like winter, it’s the end of things.

Maybe I need to start over…maybe in spring…

Arc