Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay . . .

Whenever I feel mishandled by the world, I find myself retreating to a safe and small space where I can control the chaos raging without (and within) with a simple closing of a door. In this perfect square of a room is a haven where I can curl and listen to the soothing rustle of the wind through the trees outside as it says, It's all right . . . it's all right. Here, the sun, too, cheerfully spills through the window and the birds twitter as energetically as always. I realize, life, in its resilience, goes on. However much I try to escape from the external and the helter-skelter, I simply cannot shut the door to life. It will, again and again, attempt to intrude and herein lies its beauty. It simply implies that the world will not give up on one who will not give up on the world.

I don't know what is causing me to feel out of sorts lately. Maybe it's the full moon. Maybe it's the depressing topic of the manuscript I just finished working on. Maybe it was Pico Iyer and his insistence on finding the lonely and dismal in his travels. Maybe it's because I'm constantly getting news of people dying or getting sick or people getting sick and dying. Maybe it's all of the above. So as a way of coping I again feel this need to withdraw, to crawl into my hole, and nurse myself into some semblance of equilibrium.

In the face of ugliness my natural inclination is to seek beauty, always beauty. I pawed through my books and films in search of the perfect escape and found it today in re-watching one of Almodovar's films. As before, I see myself identifying with the character who often cries when confronted with the "exquisite." There was a time in the past when I, too, was moved to silly tears during a scene in a stage play that I was watching. It was so true and wonderful, it wounded me. My tears just kept falling and falling and I found myself squeezing the life out of P's hand because I just didn't know what came over me.

As I got to the part in the movie where Caetano Veloso rendered a slow and touching version of "Cucurrucucú Paloma" and the character that I identify with once again cried, it dawned on me that contrary to what others might think, we are really not alone in our misery.

Loneliness, too, like love, is universal.