_so much of life so much of love_ Solitude. We hear ourselves better when we are alone. I don’t know when I realized how deeply sad I was while doing what everyone thought was a successful life and career. Maybe I always did. The truth of it was that I felt completely hollow, as if nothing had meaning. At some point, I came across a story of a 7-year-old girl who wanted to be the youngest pilot to fly a small plane across the United States. She, her father and her flight instructor took off from Half Moon Bay in California in April 1996, heading for the East Coast. The destination was Falmouth, Massachusetts. The next day, lifting off from a stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming, her plane crashed in a storm. She died, along with her father and the flight instructor. And I remember the story said that she called her mother before flying out and said something like, “Can you hear the rain?” I don’t know all the context of it, and there was a lot of debate I think as to whether young pilots should be doing this. But that story stayed in my mind. I mean, in the sense as to whether you risk everything and die doing what you are meant to do or live that hollow life and slowly die inside? The girl's question kept playing in my head: Can you hear the rain? There's a bend on the Assebet River where the sun sets in autumn that seems to call you away from the familiar into a journey toward something more. The light beckons. I decided to journey by train across the United States, from East Coast to West Coast, then up north through San Francisco to Seattle before returning .. only to take a flight to Asia seeking something like passion. (Fall by the Assabet River, Maynard, Massachusetts)