Yesterday, I met an actress friend on the Green Line. We both traveled from our jobs toward the Loop – her to an acting class, me to the library. My pants were tucked into my (Green) rain boots. She told me I looked like a British horsewoman. I told her that my horse would be waiting for us at the Ashland station, and I meant it.

The thought of this horse was more real and more pleasant to me than the presence of my friend, the clouds outside the train’s windows, or the sense of my own breath moving in the gallon accordions of my lungs. I am still thinking about that damn horse.

I told my friend this. Imagination, she told me, is an escape. I wonder – I know there is – if there is a danger in practicing escaping – just like when I was a kid, how I used to practice unfocusing my eyes.

(I seem to bring a better quality of observation to these posts when I am forced to do them less often. You know what they say about absence. )