Writing should be the right thing to do at times like this.

Not screaming, getting drunk, crying, or despairing.

But I can’t write.

I will smile, breathe, and go slowly.

For a while she remembered the tang. The piercing  exhilarating feeling of expansion and reaching for near and far.

The breadth, width, and availability of the world. As if a radio station was playing silently next to the one she was listening to now. All she needed was to turn a knob.

I found myself lost in a dream. Daydream.

… another wasted dream…

I look at the world and see no understanding…

I look at the world from the points on my computer screen. It’s a big world, with enormous problems, great victories, long miles, and numberless destinies. I can’t accommodate them all in my little mind, but I don’t give up trying.

I can’t imagine the lives of Afghans, trampled by local and global violence. I can’t empathize with the Pakistani scientist, working with nuclear energy. I cannot count the banknotes of a Zimbabwean mother, buying milk for her children.

I prefer to marvel at the skill and fine work of Swedish interior designers, the melodic triumph of Finnish rockers, and the compassion of American aid workers. I want to look at the big world and think ‘it is good’.

It is easy to despair, looking at the big world. A friend said today that Bulgaria is a small country with small problems, easy to solve. I don’t agree. I don’t think numbers and territory determine significance, it is the vision that counts. The vision of improving the self, the world, and all the stages between the inside and the outside. As far as the horizon.

Some dreams are big, and some are small, the old adage goes.

Right now, I have a very small dream. It’s a room with a view, taken from the portfolio of a fashionable Californian designer. Two reclining chairs, facing the window, a fireplace between them, and plants on both sides. I just loved it, was touched by the perfectly achievable combination. Okay, maybe deceptively achievable.

An open fire, albeit not wood-fueled. Soft background music. Damn, another chair…