Spring prematurely in the air, and the sun, dearly missed, has finally returned for what will surely be a short visit. All too quickly it will be over and soon the dreary absence will be all we know. We are mistress to the sun, whose every secret we harbor, but on whom these are our only grasp. We wait for scraps.

Saturday was gorgeous and people were out lapping up the scarce rays.

I went for a long drive over water, chasing that very sun, driving headlong into the void of its wake. Comfortable isolation, palpable beside me in a dark empty wood. I think I could go on and on across the striped pavement, a fleeting witness to the skeletons surviving near-total clear cut, who retain their nobility in silhouette against the glow of distant cities. I would lie beneath their sisters' sheltering arms and gaze up into the stars, feeling safest when reacquainted with the truthful smallness of human existence.

Today, Valentine's Day. Sun's gift to us an extended visit. We feel, momentarily, the chosen one.

I saw myself from afar walking down the hill toward Fremont. In a velvet hat and Robert Levin improvising Mozart, I was a self unlike any before and yet more genuinely me than usual. I felt like I was in a movie placed in Europe, briskly striding past ancient houses in a small village. The residents waved and smiled to me. Some spoke but the fortepiano drowned them out and I only smiled in return. It was the hat: a rose petal gently taming the wavy tresses and bringing out the green of sparkling Spring eyes. The neighbors looked upon a stranger and were compelled to draw her smile upon them.