SYLVIA MCELROY

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn.
Why?
Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Sometimes inside you.
So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm,closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There`s no sun there, no moon, no direction,no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones.


And you really will have o make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand rator blades. People will bleed there,and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood, you will catch that blood, in your own hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you wont remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You wont even be sure, in face, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you came out of the storm, you wont be the same person who walked in. Thats what this storm's all about.

a friend of mine reminded me to be brave no matter what i am facing at the moment, and she gave me this excerpt from Murakami's " Kafka on the shore" .