Sunday early afternoon in the Tuscan countryside, mid-August, 40°C outside. I make the most of it by staying hydrated inside. Just another lazy holiday day, this is as lazy as the year gets. In the large, old living room on the ground floor, it is a few degrees cooler. Time has stopped here. Light is scarce, so I like to open the blinds of the only large window in the room, with a view of the back garden. The house is quiet. The only sound I hear, apart from my breathing, is sporadically some insect-buzz from the garden. All the furniture is from over 70-80 years ago. I look around – every single object in that room bears a piece of family history. The portraits of children, now grown up, older people; the cutlery in the cupboards, with which the big family had eaten and celebrated events together; the liquors, untouched for years, that have greeted important guests; the old-fashioned desk where letters and records were written; the leather sofa, offering me a gentle hug every time I surrender tired on it. The vases with decorative dry flowers standing on various surfaces – finishing touch of the lady of the house; the handmade goblins and the paintings, hanging on the walls – made by the ancient owners of the place. I could smell the layers of dust carrying history in here. But there was something else: the smell of old furniture, air that has not been let out since months, maybe years? A nostalgic snapshot of many years of many people's lives. If only the walls could talk.. I take all the atmosphere in. It inspires me. I came here to write. No phone, no computer, just my notebook, pen, a few books and my imagination. I feel my throat is dry and quickly taste the refreshing, cold water I had brought. I make myself comfortable on the central, big table. As I sit down, the wooden chair feels cold. I lean back and stare at the blank page for a while. I realise the only thing standing in the way of my writing is my doubt, uncertainty to commit to an idea. But somehow, as steady and timeless as this place is, it motivates me to create lives and universes on paper. I can see a character, a woman, in her thirties, she is expecting a baby, happy and smiling, she is resting on a bench in a beautiful, green park. She holds a diary, or no, a sketch book maybe, she is drawing something on the pages. There are bees and butterflies in the air and if I try I can almost hear them and smell the air of that early-summer day. My hand starts to write on the blank paper and I can see the words coming to life: “Dear Mum, The holiday has just begun and it is one of the hottest late May afternoons in years. If only you could sit next to me right now, you would feel my bubbling joy, like I feel the new life through my veins. Any day now can be the D-day. You should know, it is a girl and she is going to be called Hope. Just like the feeling she is bringing with her arrival. I feel I never really knew what love was until expecting. I know now for sure I am changing and there is going to be a new me when she is born. A fears mum protecting her baby. I will not have a peaceful breath until I make sure she is all right. Remember how you used to tell me “Believe in yourself, this is the one true thing in life!”? I have never believed in anything more than I believe in my ability to protect this little life I carry inside me. I used to write a lot, for myself, letter to you, to friends. Then life happened, my writing stopped. I do feel though that if I don't put pen on paper now, I might lose these magical feelings surrounding these moments of my life. Isn't the Present all the moments that happen? But if they are like the corals of sand on the beach, I often feel they slip through my fingers. So I write to you now, because I need a witness to this memory. I look at the picture around me as a whole: beautiful afternoon, hot breeze caressing my skin, the buzz of bees, the beauty of butterflies and the sun on the horizon starting to set, bathing the park in most beautiful shades of colours. The life inside me getting ready to come to this beautiful world and I can not wait to show her all of it. This snapshot of life will not be lost in the sand on life's beach. I just captured it through my writing. Right now everything is hot: the sunset is in hot colours, the breeze, the feelings inside me. This literal and figurative warmth I capture and can always use it when I get cold in the mundane everyday buzz. If the growing baby inside me has taught me anything, it is to slow down, notice if not everything, then at least as much as possible around, use all the senses to “see”, in an almost different dimension, on a different level with different eyes. And the pictures are marvellous, they are mine. They are the most precious captures of life I have, without using a camera. When we read these lines later, we will feel warm. And never alone again. Hope on the way! Much love to you, mum!”

Wait for the End! I'm sorry, Momo, it reads on the back of the faded postcard he holds. It's not safe here. Go home. I'll catch you later. There's no signature, not that Momo needs one. Not when he can find that familiar lopsided scrawl etched onto the left side of his soul. Not when he already knows he's late. I'm sorry, Momo. It isn't the first time he's been left behind to deal with the aftermath of those words. They replay over and over in his mind, like a song that's stuck in his head, one that he accidentally learned all the lyrics to. It's not safe here. He wants to unlearn these words. In a moment of flickering frustration, Momo rips up the postcard into quarters and lets them go into the clutches of the wind. He watches as the pieces of ‘Greetings from Kil-where!' flutter away until they become only dark spots against the red sky. He wishes the Drift could let go of Colin that easily. (“There's no sun in Kil-where,” Colin had once told him. They had been lying on the back deck at their house in Anchorage, watching as the day slowly faded into night. It'd been the summer before high school before Colin's already-sharp edges pierced the sky. “No moon there, either. Completely uninhibited.” “Must be pretty lonely there,” Momo had muttered sleepily, barely keeping his eyes open. “It is. It really is, Momo.”) Go home. The purple sands of Kil-where shift beneath Momo. He crumples to the desert ground and does another count of the number of times he's let himself get caught in this moment between two trapezes. Catch you later. Six times. That's how many times Colin's promised to catch Momo, and how many times he's pulled his hand away from him at the very last moment. Six different worlds. Six different skies. Six different failures. He's never seen a sky this red before; at least that's new to him. Momo lies down in the surprisingly cool sand and lets his own tears of anger fall. He stares up at the empty red sky of Kil-where and waits for this world to end, too. ☉ “I'm sorry, Momo.” It's not the first time Colin's speaking these words, and it won't be the last. It's the night before Colin leaves for those six different skies. They're both eighteen-years-old, and Colin's leaned up against the kitchen sink, looking like the kind of boy people write tragedies about. His shaved head matches the light of the moon peeking through the windows, and his nose is broken in three places now instead of two. It's the first time Momo's seen him all day, and the rumor of the fight at school finally comes full circle. “Just...don't go. Please.” These words mark Momo as another character in a tragedy, too. Just a different kind. Colin smiles sadly, but he doesn't take Momo's hand. “I'll catch you later, Momo.” The Drift reaches for him and doesn't let go. Momo reaches for him, too, and misses. ☉ Question: What is the Drift? a) a dance move that originated from the 1980s. You know, the one with the leg and the hip thrust. Yeah, that one. b) a secret plane of existence in the universe that selects people without rhyme or reason, thus giving them the ability to travel between worlds and different dimensions. c) a horrible, horrible thing that needs to learn how to let go. d) all of the above. ☉ The first time Momo meets Colin, he tries to evict him from their house. “He shouldn't be wearing my clothes,” he's trying to explain to his mothers, Rosalie and Manon. Colin sits out of earshot at the kitchen table, scarfing down lasagna like he hasn't eaten in three months, which, knowing the Drift, is probably true. “I don't care if he's from the Drift. He should get his own clothes.” It's basic ten-year-old logic. He should have known better; Rosalie's from the Drift, too, and Manon has a soft spot for wandering souls. Colin doesn't know anymore better than Momo. His mothers think he's ten-years-old, too, like Momo, but unlike Momo, he smiles too much and he looks as if he's made out of the sharp pieces of glass you find in an alleyway that you could cut yourself with if you aren't careful. He's too easily impressed by the microwave; he doesn't even know who Spider-Man is, which, to Momo, is more than enough of a reason to not trust him. He doesn't know about the Drift, either, even though it's the closest thing he's ever had to a home. Then again, not a lot of people do. (He later learns the reason behind Colin's sharpness; the Drift hadn't been kind to him, and in turn, he'd somehow misplaced the coordinates that would have shown him how to be a normal boy, a boy who hadn't been chosen by the Drift. He lost that part of himself among the stars and the moons, and the Drift never gave it back to him). “The Drift.” The words fall from Colin's lips like yellow ribbons as he sits at their kitchen table, wearing a dazed expression and Momo's clothes that don't fit him right; Momo's wearing his pajamas and a seething glare sent towards the direction of Colin.

https://www.mycoronachronicle.com/post/pressured-time-during-the-coronavirus March 25, 2020 Today I watched the news while I drank my morning coffee. Watching news is now usually a most-of-the-day thing and “morning coffee” no longer a very meaningful phrase since I don't notice anymore when I cross the line between morning and afternoon. That's because the days — now weeks! — have started to stretch like chewed gum. Yes, it's been weeks. Who knows what day it is today? At the very least, admit it, we've started to squint and ask each other, “Thursday? No … Friday?” It doesn't matter anyway. It's officially day 14 of the COVID-19 pandemic and we're starting to see how little almost everything matters. I'm talking about things that mattered hugely up till now, or even just in February. I don't need to make a list because anyone reading this already knows every item on it (bus schedules, tax deductions, if your sports bra has 3-way stretch, who won “The Voice” — let's just say everything that isn't how much food you have in the house and whether that tickle in your throat means anything). An interesting thought: how many of the small things, which we were so consumed by until so recently, have stopped mattering because we now have truly big things to worry about … and how many never did matter? Already we're embarrassed by how we used to fret over them, though it's only been weeks, if not days. I want to do this because I see myself and everyone I know changing. I see my country changing, and I want to set it down while it's happening instead of afterward, when so many of the details will be lost. So let's start with my second revelation, which is that not only are we changing, and no matter how much we may resist, this pandemic will change us deeply and permanently. Even if some of us will avoid getting the virus, none of us can avoid being changed by it. I know dark times lie ahead but I hope some of the changes will be positive. Inevitably we'll look back on the arrival of the coronavirus with sorrow, probably anger, and maybe even rage, because every one of us is going to lose someone or something. And there will always be questions about how many of those losses were avoidable. But will we also look back and say, overall we're the better now for it? Will we say, we wouldn't have wished it on ourselves but it improved us —- as Americans? As humans, even? It's possible. But, of course, we can't know yet. As with all catastrophes, some individuals and groups are rising fast to the challenge, already growing from it, becoming heroes: we can see this in our health care workers, in some of our leaders, the people who deliver groceries to us, collect our garbage and recycling, the neighbors who call to ask if we need anything. Who among us will grow through this particular disaster? This crisis is occurring everywhere, so although it isn't everywhere at once, in a real sense there's also no running away. Because it too is on the move. When I think now about what I could have done to prepare. Me personally. I could've stocked my house better, gotten a separate freezer. I could have made sure all my outside business was taken care of, my work caught up. We all could've done those things. We could have asked our leaders, “what is our level of preparedness if this virus comes and is as bad as it is elsewhere, or worse? What can we do now to prepare, just in case?” Some people did do that. But most of us didn't. Today is March 25. I live in New Jersey where there are 4,402 confirmed cases of corona virus. The U.S. now has 54,453 cases but no one takes that number as fact because there's been so little testing, and it started so late. Whatever the real number is has to be higher. It's easier to count how many people have died of it: 737 nationwide, 62 of them in New Jersey. The storm has hit and we are getting wet and we can't escape. So we huddle in our houses and a lot of us try to look at the upside. We're warm and fed, today anyway. Spring is here, and it's great not to have to go to work. Except the street outside is empty and no planes fly overhead and streams of people keep walking by with dogs and strollers like they're headed to a fair. Something is off. This week, and it's only Wednesday, I've gotten so many things done: read three books, written two short fiction pieces, started this blog today. I've been on social media, cooking up a storm, watching movies. I've been cleaning the whole house, reorganizing closets, painting my bathroom vanity … all things I don't do enough of normally, or have been meaning to get to. But underneath, we know this is no vacation and we can't seem to really set that aside, no matter how we distract ourselves. We're all sad and scared and full of dread. Alone in our houses, we have never been so connected.

So, it wasn't until I was past that hump in life when I realized that what I love to do is going to slip me by and I will never even given it a shot. See, I have always been a writer, but the problem with that was I didn't have the time to actually put my whole heart into it. I had other things that were taking up my time, and I never took the time to write. But since life has slowed for me and being a single parent, it's a hard task to do. When you got kids, and my kids are 9, 19 and 25. So, it was a hard task to pull off when especially they were so far apart in age. Don't get me wrong, I would've loved to put off getting married and having a bunch of kids for writing, but my heart followed something or I should say, someone else and there went the writing. I kind of wrote in journals when I was having a rough day or when I was sad, or even when I was so angry and I wanted to scream and pull out my hair; I wrote in journals. It's so much better than freaking out the kids because you had a terrible day. Journals are a great way to start of being a writer. It's kind of like your your own editor and publisher. Now matter what you say in that journal, you can never be wrong with the things you write; it's all about you in that journal. It's a great place to vent and cry and not have anyone know about it. Plus when you have a hard time talking to your partner; journals help like messengers. Write what you want and ask your partner to read and comment on the new entry that you wrote, ask for their advice or opinion, and it helps when you can't say what you want to to that person. You'd be surprised how much that helps; It was a helpful idea when my spouse and I couldn't find the words to say to each other without getting out of hand. It made us sort out things that we couldn't say to each others faces, and it mellowed our anger moments when the kids were around, and they were around all the time. It helps when you are way from home, it helps when you need a friend and your friends aren't available all the time, they're around, but at like 3 am or 4 am, you really shouldn't call up your buddy and ball over the phone or vent at them. They probably won't want to answer the phone after a couple of times doing that to them. I know I would lose my mind if my buddy called me so late and laid it out on me. So, starting out slow is good and getting used to writing in a journal is the best I think in my opinion. You might have all these great ideas for books to write or short stories, but when it actually comes to putting it down on paper or typing it on the screen; it doesn't happen, you freeze up, your mind goes blank, you have nothing to say all of a sudden. It's because your putting too much pressure on yourself and you aren't ready for the big dog park just yet. Don't be disappointed, don't be a quitter; do it slowly, make sure your comfortable talking to yourself before you try to talk to others with your words. Writing can be so much fun, it can lead to amazing things that pay very, very well. If you have the gift and you love what you write, then keep it going, ust don't rush it. You won't get anywhere and its going to bum you out. I've been writing for two decades and look where I am. I am at the beginning only, I lost so much time, I put off my passion and gained other achievements in life. I don't regret a thing, and my kids are crazy at times, but that's my life, and writing about things that I love and the knowledge I have after so long, makes things so much easier for me to write as well. I was limited to what I had to say two decades ago, not now. I have tons to say, tons to through down on the screen or paper and make others feel all those crazy feelings that I did when I wrote it. I want to entertain and let people into my world. Fiction or non- fiction, personal; what ever it may be and how the readers want the stories to go. It's important that you make the time to write, and take the time to have those free moments in a day for yourself not anyone else just you. Having you time, elps in so many ways, it's amazing that being alone with your thoughts never left you alone. Follow your dreams, even if your old like dirt. It's the wisdom and history and all that good stuff that readers want to hear. So, let's get out there and fill these people's lives with our words. You won't ever be sorry, I am not sorry for anything. I love it so far.

I am fighting, flailing my little arms. A lady and a man I don't know, are stuffing me into this stupid car seat. I look out the fingerprinted window and there she is. Staring, watching, not doing anything at all. A single raindrop wanders its way down the window, lost, nowhere to go. I fight even harder, refusing to stop until I get what I want. The car starts to move, so I twist my body to see if she is still watching. Deepening my twist, so I can get one last glimpse before we turn off the street. I face forward with tears streaking my face. I don't know these people who are taking me away from her. From the lady, I have known all my life— my mother. I am confused, trapped in this strange building. After they took me from my mother, they took me to this horrid place. I feel completely claustrophobic locked in this small room. I hope I can leave this devastating room. I honestly don't know why it seems so devastating, but I guess it just is. The room is bland, boring. The walls are an off-white color. A dissatisfying color. The only toy here is a small kitchen set. The kitchen set looked as if to break at the slightest touch. It has white paint peeling off. The paint being torn from the set, just like me. I miss her terribly, my mother. I feel scared, my anxiety spiking. I am just sitting on this patched up couch looking at the cup of water on the table next to me. Random people keep poking their heads in, trying to encourage me to drink water, but I am not thirsty. I hope they find something better to do than to keep bothering me. The same woman and man that took me from my mother walk through the door and stand in front of me. I stare at them blankly as the woman says, “My name is Ms. Blaster and this is Mr. McDoris.” I nod my head, for my mind is elsewhere. My mind is busy. Busy on all the worries rushing through my head like a tsunami. Ms. Lee gets on both knees and looks directly into my eyes and says gently, “Can you come and follow us, please?” She stands up and walks out of the room, with Mr. McDoris following. I hesitate, then finally give in and run to catch up with them. I walk into a massive lobby. People are sitting in black chairs. It felt airy, unlike the small room I was in. The people were all nicely dressed, they seemed arrogant, even though I have never met them before. Windows cover most of the walls. I continue to follow Mrs. Blaster and Mr. McDoris. They lead me to this woman I remember spending time with a couple of months ago. She would take me to the Kings Dominion and Maymont. The woman is wearing nice clothing just like everyone else, except I could tell that she wasn't like them at all. She's not really tall, but she is definitely much taller than me. Ms. Blaster, Mr. McDoris, and the woman start talking about something that seems like it's important, but I'm not paying attention. I am busy trying to understand the situation. I squeeze onto the woman's hand as if it's my life support. I make our way to the car and she buckles me into my car seat. She walks around the front of the car and gets into the driver's seat. Once again, raindrops hit the window. A single drop wanders all the way to the bottom and disappears. More lead their way into the safety of the frame. Tucked safely together. United. Every insignificant thing belongs somewhere. For some reason, that gives me a sort of clarification that everything is going to be alright. I think this is the first time I truly feel safe in a really long time, I don't have to endure any more pain, physical nor emotional like I have before. I also think that you have to believe it yourself, you have to believe that things are going to get better. You have to have hope. Hope. Hope is a wonderful thing. For the first time, I have hope. I have hope that I will be safe. I have hope that I will be happy. I have hope for my future and hope for now. Even though I have endured tragedy, I have regained hope.