proprio qui

okay, i take it all back.... i'm not really feeling annoyed or misunderstood or anything resembling yuck. what i feel right now is WHIMISICAL....pure, unadulterated thrills have been chugging through my body for the last several hours. i'm sure you're wondering....'what is up with this flippant chick?' well, people, i'm here to tell you.....

THIS is what has gotten under my skin and turned everything upside down. *sigh.* if ever some as-yet-to-be-seen physical place has captured me, it would be venice....

it was an early spring day in 1996. i had the most delicious sleep, waking from a dream in which i was in this lovely, quaint, soft hotel room. the bed was awash with clean, crisp white sheets, pillows, all billowy and cool...the kind you can sink into and not emerge for days....the walls were a light terracotta red mixed with goldenrod. there was one large window and i walked over to it, swinging it open (each of two halves) toward the spring air. just outside the plain window was a small flower box, filled to bursting with these intricate, bright red and violet blossoms. and the breeze....the sweet, slightly warm breeze just gushed into the room, weaving through my hair and sliding across my skin, smooth like silk.....i felt such warmth and happiness in that moment....

and when i woke up, it was an unusually balmy day for february or march in baltimore; the sun was shining and this SAME wonderful breeze was blowing all around me as i walked over to campus. i ran into a good friend (someone whom i would later love to the point of heartbreak) on the breezeway between these two buildings and as the dead leaves left in winter's wake swirled all around us, i told him about this dream....and i remember him smiling, absorbing some of my own excitement and mirroring it back to me. i felt like skipping, dancing, frolicking.....things that, in most of my waking life, i feel too bound-up to do or even entertain doing.

from then on, it was venice on my mind....venice in my soul....venice coursing through my veins. and someday i will go there...with someone...and we will ride a gondola and kiss under the bridge of sighs and bathe in the sunshine and drink sweet wine.....

but until then, i will read this book and dream....