windows

I have a lot of thinking to do.

I'm in Amsterdam, and today is the day when we set our clocks back an hour, and it is so silent outside. I've booked into an apartment which looks back into the courtyards off one of the canals, and it is all windows and trees and the sky. It's a cold morning, it rained a bit, but it's sunny now, and the heat vents are giving off steam. Outside no one is about, all enjoying their lie-ins, and the beautiful city waits for me, with its bridges and alleys and canals and secret things to explore, things I have seen many times yet continue to enthrall me every time I come here.

I have a lot of thinking to do. All these windows remind me of all the lives around me, all with their own worries and dreams, and in the scheme of things my worries and dreams are no bigger than anyone else's, but since they are mine, they are big to me.

It's so beautiful here. And yet I just want to stay in bed. That picture, by the way, is the view from my bed. Here in Amsterdam. I tend to retreat here when I want to think or just get away. It's a city of huge happiness and in some ways, huge sadness, too. I think this time is a sad time, even as I fight it.

There's going to be some big changes happening in Texpatriate-land over the coming months. Exciting, scary, irrevocable. I'm in the calm before the storm and to say that I am kind of freaking out is an understatement.

I've got some thinking to do.