When did it all start to go wrong? Possibly when she came to see that she was ruled by her desires, but the world was not. Sarah was old enough to have seen this before, but had wilfully ignored it. And now look what had happened!

She was walking through the forest, thinking that it was spring: the birds, the buds, the weak sunshine. Best time of the year. And then suddenly  a hard frost covered everything. The buds turned to ice in front of her eyes, the birds fell from their branches, her breath made a cone in front of her which followed her around. It had not been winter in her heart. But secretly, it was so everywhere else, and had been for some time. She hadn’t noticed. 

And what about the internal world? Sarah had hoped to find the right man sometime: empathetic, funny, devoted. The problem was that she had expectations, and they always came to nothing. In a reverse coup de foudre, she usually found that the man was a great deal more preoccupied with himself than he was with her. Or perhaps it was more simple than that: she was too old, too fat and too clever. A triple whammy. 

What to do? Sarah realised suddenly that something was afoot. A harsh wind tore down the valley. It was alternatively hot and cold: burning like the Föhn, freezing like the Mistral. It was the wind of change. It was outside her. But she had to bring it inside.

She concentrated. It came in through her eyes, her ears, her nose. It roared through the inside of her body, shook her organs, rattled her bones. And then, as suddenly as it had come, it left. She had expected to feel empty, but instead she felt a calm she had never known: beyond fear, beyond desire, beyond expectation. It was as it was. It was her. She was it. That. That. That.