Transit - but going where?
It is still dark when I get up, the suitcase carefully packed the day before. I will be away almost a month, the preparations have been exstensive, at work and home. The little plane takes off, and carries me into dawn.


Beneath the wings of the plane the mountains soar and dip, dressed in silky white, pure, virgin solitude for mil after Norwegian mil.


I long for the throngs of human beings, for voices and bodies pushing and jostling.


Old ladies and young girls, mingling in the streets and open spaces of the city, a girl begging for money for a room for herself and her unborn child. I pass her by, the implications of her need impossible for a Norwegian. A pregnant girl, unprotected, needy, on the streets - my mind refuses to understand what I have just passed. And the girl looked so young, she could have been my own, my bright musician girl. Safer then, to watch the old ladies choose flowers to brighten their day. One day that may be me - I can deal with that thought.


But I cannot flee the snow, only here it is grey and gritty, as it settles on the fence and in the yard. I watch it through the window. No layer of soft crystal silk this, and I do not venture out.


I stay in, playing with my new ball, writing, reading, recapturing the dreams I put aside in times of too tight schedules and curriculums that need to be managed. I am away, but still I am home, at home in my mind and my tasks in a way I can never be when my space and time is devoted to everything but what might be in my mind. And so I occupy my body with exercizes, while my mind roams.