When a curtain that is a door moves with the trade winds blowing through the windows, I think it is a small person hurrying from one place of hiding to the next. I live among ghosts. People come and go, paddles and hands in the water and out again. A shadow in the sun, here they were.

Oh, the things I consider. I make a list:

hell and high water, and I choose neither; unless the water is pretty
dogs
the strength of character and tough feet
big dipper
frangipani caterpillars
Einstein's Dreams, always, by Alan Lightman; especially the chapter about houses on stilts on mountains
that odd feeling after climbing up high and resting, and looking out, over, below; and wanting to jump because flight seems incredibly possible
likewise, the need to keep swimming once one has left shore
likewise, paddling into the wind into open sea, and never wanting to look back to land
self made cancer

I remember both of my children
(and I wonder if I did the same
when I was small)
trying to grasp the water that poured from the faucet in their bath,
their little hands closing
making fists
over and over.

They failed, and I am certain I did, too.

I bet you, also.

Life gets in the way sometimes, and so the charcoal pencils get left behind. Most recently, all the pencils are wrapped up in boxes labeled with the names of their stuff inside and sent away to some foreign room or left prisoner in the dark of a space that was trying to finally breathe again.

I must be doing some things correctly, I said to a hiding sun disappearing behind magic mountain islands.

Painting walls makes people smile, and so I find myself on St. John, USVI, making walls smile with swimmy things. I win today, as I am in a beautiful place and I am making things.

Sugar ants have found their way into the keys of my laptop. My children and I introduce sand to the sheets on the bed that we are sharing. We see fish through the water, and then we are fish in the water.

I lighten the load. Keeping nothing, as usual, I walk away from everything to gain more. My bags returning will be less heavy than when we started.

Painting walls for others is an incredibly different process than seeking a goal with charcoal, than finding an answer or finding the right explanation through oil paint. Painting walls is fast and silly, and in the end I find myself enjoying the hurried work of it. The puzzle of color and shape and form is always there, no matter the content.