This is happiness, genuine and untainted bliss. She has been lying under a tree long enough for the sunrays to encroach on her sheets. The blazing summer sun is tickling her toes. She sits up, pulls her knees into her chest, and crosses her arms around her folded legs. Curling up into a ball like this has become a habit. She brings her overlapped forearms closer to apply more pressure on her chest.
She felt the urge to run away yesterday. She wanted to be surrounded by people whom she does not know nor care about. She craved to hear the silence of a bustling city. These uncontrollable impulses are few and far between, but when one comes to existence, there is no way of getting rid of it without acting upon it. Like the recurring compulsion to chop her hair off. Twice has she already gotten a bob cut, because all of a sudden her hair became too cumbersome and she would have pulled out every strand if they did not get cut. Last year, she donated 13 inches of her hair and got a pixie cut, which lasted only a few weeks, until she shaved it all off. It is like an itch that one must scratch.
The Englischer Garten is scratching that itch for her. She thinks back to her college years and remembers how refreshing it was to skip class and read in a park. Or explore the streets of Manhattan. The simple act of drinking bubble tea in St. Marks or windowshopping in Soho instead of sitting in a dark lecture hall used to make her so happy. The rebel inside her thrived off of such occasions. It made her feel like a free individual. She feels like a free individual right now, however illusory it may be.
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