“...spring has come to our little seaside ville here and it is grand.”

Some version of the thing known as spring has come to our little seaside ville here and it is grand. Winter has never really been that great a season for me, long periods of rain and darkness punctuated by brief semi-sunny days. People are always saying how great it is to put on a sweater and go for a walk in the fall, you know, get out and get involved. But they never seem quite as optimistic when the sun goes down at 3 and they've already fallen twice and severely muddied that sweater, do they?

Oh well, the weight has now been lifted and I've watched leaves turn from hard little nibblets into soft sheets of vegetable heavy with juice. Everything changes around this time. The smells come back, the clocks change, and the clothes come off like they are on fire making driving, which is always treacherous in this god forsaken learner's zone of a town, almost totally impossible. The same conversation occurs like an ancient spring ritual: where are all these women in the winter, wrapped up in fucking bhurkas?

Every spring reminds me of every other spring I have known, plus a bit of every summer. Its almost like memories are only accessible from a situation that is similar to the original. The angle of the sun, the act of taking the long way home, the desire to sit down on a patio and have a coffee on the way back from getting groceries, all remind me of last spring when I had the same feeling of things being more leisurely, not so cramped. Gone is the feeling that nature is trying to force you inside so it can commit some horrible deed out in the street and have no one see.

It seems that the duration of the earth's rotation on its axis could not be timed more perfectly. The day I forget that the fall even exists it comes and snaps out at me like a rudely awakened dog from some corner in the shade. I say to myself "sonofabitch...I know what that is..." and hurry back out to the sun trying to remember if i saw one more cold something or other in the bottom of the cooler. Spring though, thank god, comes on in just the same way. The day I have resigned myself to living for the rest of my life out in 68 shades of grey, something approaches and I grab onto it like the edge of a life raft. A few more weeks of drifting and eating canned ham and it's all over.

Turning the corner gets the gears turning about how to spend the next precious months. How will I create the situations that make me look at the scenarios I am involved in and say "This...right here...is the proverbial shit?" What were the things that I planned to do last year that I didn't get around to and that without that great blind optimism of spring, I might already know I probably won't do again? More hiking, sleeping outside, seeing a sunrise or two (maybe at the beginning of a day for a change and not at the end of a long night), taking more pictures, risks, and time off. At some point life seems like just a mix of hopes that keep moving ahead into the future and great memories from the past that keep getting mixed up with the films I've seen. Both realms untrustworthy and untouchable which means we find ourselves squarley deposited in the present. Not such a bad spot to be on a day like this.