Celebrating a Year

It is transition days here, as I will leave soon. Time to return everything to bags, to rightful owners, and stow memories and photos, poems and ideas away until they are called for again. Marcilio sends back the final versions of our work, after receiving my second thoughts, so I have actually completed 3 compositions of my series of 6 during this two+ week stay. Not bad at all! Accomplishing this also punches a hole in my composition trepidation that I can now step through and continue to write. The first is always the hardest. As it was when I started this blog. The first post– what tone? what verb tense? how abstract? how personal? am I really a photographer? The first sonnet (I wrote weekly sonnets for my first year, and added villanelle, rondeau, decima and pantoum to my palette after that) how can I put my words into the form of the greats? But every time the action is repeated one’s voice gets stronger, and so it will be with my music writing. I have been playing other people’s notes for so long, it is time to see what’s been brewing in the back recesses of my own mind. Leaving Rio this time will be harder physically than emotionally– a switch from the past. I have bought too many things, all for very good reasons, but my luggage will be heavy and awkward. And unlike the goddess pictured, and many beach vendors here in Rio, I have not learned to carry my goods on my head. But my soul is ready to fly home to the comforts and friends and family of my real life, to fold up the cloak of time-out and bring my realizations back to where I live the rest of the year. Even if 6 inches of snow is predicted to fall there tonight.