Annie Dillard writes of coming into an awareness of who you are–the baggage you never leave behind–no matter the artiface, the covering up, the glossing over.  I remember  a line from her book, An American Childhood: “Oh fleeting moment, stay.”  I have yet to read the entire book, but only a simplified version, watered-down, almost-empty; American education.  We are all asleep, slumped over in our chairs getting through the day, the week, the months, the years.  Kids indifferent in their cockiness, what do you have to tell me?  The teachers jumping around being judged on how much they can entertain.  Wipe the sleep from your eyes.

5:33 in Praha.  The frat boys hang out the window, half naked drinking beer.  There is no hollering when I walk past.  I have already disappeared.  To myself –sometimes–I am vibrant, sexy, alive.  The target of men in clubs or cafes somewhere: Milan or Paris, smoking cigarettes and drinking doubler espresso in the cafe downstairs, men trying to hug me, to pull me to them as I pick up my dry cleaning headed out to meet my boyfriend, flying in from another country to hop from here to another country  to another.  I remember making love on the mattress on the floor in the models’ apartment, the windows that were French doors.  I don’t remember the time of year. Cold. Someone I was unaware of until too late watched from across the way.  Now I peer out this window in Prague looking for something.