Each month the moon moves across the night, larger and smaller, crescent and full, three quarters of the way, traveling back to the beginning. The tides come in with the gravitational pull of the moon and then they recede as it sends its rays down onto the swelling wa-ters even when human eyes are closed. So time is marked. The tide pirates the dunes away from the shore. The sand returns elsewhere, another village, another beach perhaps thousands of miles away on the shore of another continent. Time is the widow’s friend, they say. But what they say is not always true. What I know is that time is moving forward while the face of the moon changes and changes back again and I am here suspended in time, like the f ly I saw in an amber stone, waiting for release. This is a book about happiness regained—or not. TEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT, THERE I A M STANDING AT THE front door of my apartment. I have a key but will not use it. Instead I turn the knob, because I have left the door unlocked. I left it unlocked because I wasn’t sure I could make the key work.
