On days like this when it rains softly and I'm inside, I feel very calm and settled, but also forlorn for some travel. Rain seems to induce a mood of relaxed possibility. It stirs wanderlust in me, albeit in a quiet, sort of tempered manner.

I feel like sitting in one of the giant windows at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. It was a lovely hotel although I never went out to Shinjuku that much. I think its because I felt very displaced with all the Japanese I couldn't understand, very alien and foreign. I feel like sitting at the window or on one of the soft beds, with soft light and a slight blur to it all. Everything a little like Lost In Translation, even the sense of discombobulation.

I remember doing this - plucking out my brother's white hairs before dinner (a horrendously funny enterprise) then sitting calmly in blue water taking a bath, thinking of all the things I would write in my little Italian journal and that remain there to this day. I thought of the mountains I had skiied a few days back, the thick blanket of snow that engulfed the resort in a blizzard. Blizzards occur every place I go, so it seems. If I may be so inclined to think that I alone inspire the weather to take such drastic turns, it would appear that I produce the ideal weather for winter sport fanatics.

I think of all the times I've been away in a white winter and everything is hushed and beautiful - hot apple cider, hot spring baths, warm chocolate. Watching each other breathe. That is what days like this remind me of.