Here I am. The ever tenacious scriblerian, attempting once again “to skim the cream from the day.*” It’s a greedy thing to do. But I don’t care. My thoughts have been so jumbled lately, exploding every which way like one of those British Christmas crackers.

It’s time to unjumble them. Snuggle down. Let’s begin.

Unmasked, I stretch yearningly forward into a quiet that soothes me with the thick secure warmth of a down comforter on a frigid night. My fists unclench, my toes uncurl, my chest untightens. I’m breathing? Of course I am. But now each new breath feels like some luxuriant renewing elixir flowing through me. At last.

Had my breathing really been so shallow before? Had I really been so knotted and snarled?

Out in the world, attempting as always to conquer with a smile, to marshal support with a few agonizingly well chosen words, to acquiesce, to admire, to accede. Exhausted, my eyes squint with the effort, my head and my back tense with the oh so necessary shoring up of the facade.

The cream of the day is a balm and a salve, a hidden but oh so necessary respite. For a few private, precious moments I am the person on the other side of the photographs.

But time is almost up. Once again, stack the bricks to the barriers. Snap shut the shutters to the eyes. Soon out the front door and back to the front lines.

The soft sweet nougat center armored in a delicate chocolate shell, I am not who everyone thinks I am. Oh please. But then who of us really is?

*Johann Wolfgang von Goethe