Suddenly the trappings are as clear as the same beach on the Mediterranean that called me into it naked and vulnerable on that first trip to Sardinia. I stared into the deep Hudson River now, post-almost-getting-ripped off, post-friend-drama. Post traumatic stress. I stared into the December waves churning into soon-to-be glaciers of ice, widening the banks with peaks of dirty foam and mist. Anxiety was widening, I loathed a similar rise of ice and cold at myself for being so stupid, so naive. So desperate for change I’d compromised myself in this way. It helped to look out the window, gaze at the battered Hudson River’s water edge as it whizzed nosily past the river towns in a jumbling ride of half-humiliation, and half-relief because for now: that drama was over.

I’d wake up not knowing where I was, and then remember more of the dream in vivid detail as the day went on to have it then fuse with my new state-side realities: dirt and dearth with graffiti once art, now cracks inside fading paint, and old dry staccato with a season’s worth of yellow grass and tipping flowers ashen and faded with embers and old smoke, all to end at a stale, island wind that blows litter around until I can get back there to that dream again, the one with the waterfall, but without having to sleep through it. Leaving me to wonder: why am I still here? I was so far into the center of a big New York mess that I couldn’t tell left from right, west from east, the sea from the estuary that filtered the baggage I’d all but forgotten I had. I was under the Sardinia Spell and clearly, I needed to return there as soon as possible to realize some new possibilities…