about

I have a vivid sense memory of an early spring afternoon when I was five years old. I was playing alone outside, bundled up, maybe a bit too warm for the day. The weight of the air around me, the gusts of wind blowing my hair and rushing past my ears, the bright sun low in the sky, and the peaty smell of grass ready to be new–the accumulation of all these sensations overwhelmed me.

I stood in the yard, facing the back of our split-level house. A steep flight of open-riser stairs, two-by-fours nailed across notched support boards, ran up the side of the house from the grass to a second-floor deck. From there, a sliding glass door opened into our dining room. On other days, I would sit cross-legged on the orange carpet inside that door and watch the jagged lightning of passing summer storms. Now the glass reflected more sky, more trees, and more sun, obscuring any view into the house.

I remember a feeling that I now have the language to describe: being both of the thick world and apart from it, a profound resonance of solitude. Only looking back on that memory do I realize how much I already knew about myself in that moment.