My most introspective thoughts come at the end of each day, when I arrive at the quiet apartment alone and sit out on the back balcony for a few moments of fresh air and thought. In the back, everything is dark and still. Just one street away the city bustles with rush-hour traffic and people looking for a restaurant to eat dinner with their partners or friends, but in the back the other apartment balconies that face mine are always deserted. I sit on the wooden step and let my heightened senses just settle. During these quick moments I often acquire the truths and realizations that often evade me during the daytime. Often, these back-balcony moments impose a specifically bittersweet feeling, one that progresses in a cyclical pattern. First, the vulnerability that comes in being purely alone, without any interaction or exposure to a single human being; out in the back, it often feels as though I am invisible. This is always followed by a feeling of soft sadness, the kind that accompanies the acceptance of one's failures and, especially, the longings. The longings I experience are gigantic and often transpire through every one of my pores - oh, the longing! Once I have mused on all things failed, gone or unattainable, a crescendo of peace - almost in the form of a gentle shrug - brings an immesurable sense of who I am now, forming the best understanding of the present that I can comprehend. And soon after comes the great finale, which saturates my entire being with a feeling of wonder. As I stand and look out past the apartment buildings to the sky, I feel the particles in my body and brain tingle and sting with the mystery of what in the hell might possibly be in store for me, and for this sometimes big, sometimes small life.

Because lately in the daytime, it must be said, I spend the hours giggling, making jokes and sharing odd-ball stories with my co-worker in between the meetings and typing of documents. We have reached a plateau of comfort with one another, which I suspect has stemmed from the increasing chaos and isolation we've faced in the project we work on. This has resulted in hours of shopping during the lunch hour, and snorts of laughter at the private jokes we've created to make the time pass. It's strange, but in these light-hearted, funny and intimate moments, I've garnered something that I didn't even realize was missing. On the agenda today was a meeting with the techie guy to fix my computer, much e-mailing with project partners, lunch with the boss, the facilitation of a conference call and some intellectual work. In between the lines was some heart-shaped cut-outs of a highly unattractive man in a business magazine, the pasting of these cut-outs on my co-worker's computer screen, and the embellished ink drawings on the cut-outs to spruce up the poor unattractive man, among other things. We burst out in fits of uncontrollable laughter about five times today, and communicated in a hilariously silent manner during the conference call I was hosting. We left the office to pick up boxes of tissue paper and spent half an hour browsing quirky items on the store shelves. Last week, we started an imaginary script for an animated series in which we create hilarious scenarios and provide caricaturizations for all the people in our surroundings under coded names. There's the self-important schmoozer who compulsively repeats "all the best" and "kindest regards" to everyone he meets (Barney); there's the vengeful custodian who has a love/hate relationship with my co-worker (Elvis); there's the gorgeous Mr. Perfect character who has five Ph.D's, three olympic medals and a beautiful family, whom we pine after but doesn't ever notice us or remember our correct names (Chad) - among others. It has all been silly and satisfying, although the contrast between my daytime persona and the thoughtful brooder on the back steps is admittedly quite startling.

But no matter. Even as I went about my day at work and my evening in the back, tonight my soul was fragmented and extracted to some other-wordly realm, then shipped all the way out to Lisa's location as I read her new letter in my inbox. The purity of her raw words were instrinsically human; fully possessed, I saw the mountain, I smelled the salty air, I felt the breeze slip under my shirt. With quiet dignity, calm as though it all made sense, I sat in the seat next to her and held her hand as the ferry traveled lazily through the Pacific water. I was no longer at the office as I drank up her words, nor was I on the back steps earlier on.

In fact,
I am there still,
and these words,
they are not even mine.