It was setting over the treetops in the west.

The next thing I noticed was a golden tinge beyond my eyelids. I closed my eyes and dissolved out of myself. I held my hands on my thighs, palms up to the world. Until then I had done my daily meditation in many different places in and around town, but never here. How can I explain it? Alone, on the top of that hill, in the middle of that вЂњemptyвЂќ field (Ha!-write this down, Leo: nothing is empty), I felt as if the universe radiated from me, as if I were standing on the X that marked the center of the cosmos. I walked to the center and just stood there. The frozen ground was cloddy and rock-hard. The winter weeds were scraggly and matted down, like my hair in the morning. IвЂ™ve biked past this field a hundred times, but for some reason today I stopped. The field is on the other side of Route 113, which is where my street (Rapps Dam Road) dead-ends. It used to be a pick-your-own-strawberries patch, but now it grows only weeds and rocks. ItвЂ™s on a hillthe flat top of a hill shaped like an upside-down frying pan. ItвЂ™s a mile out of town, a one-minute bike ride from my house.

No house in view except a little white stucco bungalow off to the right. The thing is, itвЂ™s been right in front of me ever since we moved here last year, but today is the first time I really saw it. And what better way to celebrate this New YearвЂ™s Day than to begin writing a letter to my once (and future?) boyfriend. If I were in charge of calendars, every day would be January 1.

Love stargirl doostie pringle