Summer Nights

There's something about the combination of cigarette smoke and womens' perfume in warm night air that is quintessentially summer. I've been out more in the last two weekends it seems, than I have in the last two summers combined, and on both occasions I've experienced summer nights drenched in smoke, scent and the lush rustle of trees. It's reminded how much of myself I am reclaiming back.

You forget about things. You forget about sitting on patios and how good an ice cold beer goes down around midnight while you listen to the gadget reviews tech geeks are conducting over malt while drunk girls talk to each other in their best aristocratic English accents. You forget about after dinner walking with a friend on closed shopfront streets and marveling over gorgeous shoes, then heading up to Chinatown to play "guess that smell" navigating restaurant garbage.

You forget the joys of afternoon tea and talk with a friend.

You forget. And thankfully, you can remember.

I sometimes shake my head in wonderment that I have gotten here. For so long it seemed impossible. It was impossible. But at some point I just put my head down and kept going, thinking that I'd eventually look up one day and find myself in a different place. What this approach lacks in coordination it makes up for in sheer pragmatism.

I have a lot further to go, destinations I can see off in the distance, places I have been to before as well as the new and unfamiliar. Sometimes I think possibility isn't everything; it's the only thing.