In a novel I wrote a few years back, the teenage narrator, Maggie, is talking about her aspirations to Gina, her young married friend, and Gina comments that Maggie hasn’t yet found her own “windless place.”

“What do you mean?” I looked at her and she smiled, tossing the scarcely visible cigarette butt away from her with a practiced flick of her fingers. She had my full attention now and, so unlike me, she always spoke with confidence in her words.

“Just something I heard once. In a classroom maybe, or one of those deep dark discussions we indulge in at a certain time in our lives, when we’re young, and eager.”

“But what does it mean?” I said, feeling very young and eager.

“It has to do with a candle burning in a windless place,” said Gina. “It was just an image that stayed with me. Something to do with repose, and certainty — a sort of calm at the center. . . .”

The novel is called A Windless Place, as is this blog. It will, I hope, be a place of relative calm and repose, where I can write about the things that matter to me – at the moment and maybe even in the long run.