Today at the barre I had one of those days where doing “what you’re supposed to do” for ballet (turn out, straight knees, articulate through the slightly supinated ankle through the sole of the foot into the toes) felt like burning, especially down the back of my right leg. Every day starts with that burning, now that I’m in my thirties. Usually it’s gone in about ten minutes but today it dug in and fought back. 

Amanda came over after barre. I was slouched on the floor, letting the wall hold me up, feeling defeated and angry. She asked how was dinner last night and I told her I didn’t enjoy it, even though I did. We were quiet for a minute and then a perfect non-sequitur: I told her about my little paper boat. I said

I keep dreaming that I have a little paper boat and I am standing at the water’s edge and I am trying to get myself to put the little paper boat in the water so the water can carry it away on the tide, or destroy it, or turn it into a legend in another land

and while I was saying that I started to cry like a child and then stopped myself from crying and she asked me what is the little paper boat but Erina started adagio at that moment so we all danced for another hour and I didn’t have to answer.

But it’s not really something I’m dreaming. The little paper boat is from awaketimes and it is based on a candle ritual performed every summer on Lake Bled in Slovenia, where I used to live. You get a lovely little candle, you light it, you put it on the lake and it floats away. When I attended this festival I couldn’t convince myself to part with my candle, I lit it, blew it out and hid it in my pocket, took it home and secreted it away to save forever and ever as a memory of that fairytale festival on the enchanted lake. For all the subsequent years I lived there I found excuses not to attend. Do not disturb the memory. Do not part with the candle.

I can think about burning the little paper boat. It’s a pleasant thought. I’d love to tear it to shreds and scatter them around Las Vegas and the ocean and the disgusting, dry highway. I can think about mutilating it with scissors, make it a snowflake, a paper airplane, a ragged, pathetic, piece of trash.

But those are just fantasies. There is only one thing you can do with a little paper boat and that is let it sail away. That is what it was made for, that is why it showed up in your mind as a paper boat, that is why you can’t put it in your pocket or set it on fire. Put it down, please, sweetie. Let it go.