By the calendar, spring is here now. Yesterday the equinox, and today, a few moments of daylight more. But at this latitude it is still cold, and we are feeling cagy. Bean and I went out into our tiny urban yard today: a mess of lumpy lawn, a broken mower under the deck, the tall gray picket fence leaning in. He raced about on the uneven ground, falling often, laughing, bringing me dried leaves (this is what he does now—bring me small things he finds: lint, a scrap of paper, leaves. And these thing suddenly are precious.)
It was good for me, after days like the past handful, to go with Bean outdoors and watch hid body fill with bubbly wonder like soda in a cup. Good to remember how easy it is pocket these small instances of joy.
We twirled until we were both dizzy and then we sat and watched the world spin. I could see his eyes still tracking the orbiting yard around him, and the grin on his face wide like the grin on mine.
It’s been an interesting week of sinking deeply into words, and now I’m longing for easier things: for messy collages, for magazines, anything where the image does all the work, and words are only for decoration. I’ve realized how important daily writing is for me---not just morning pages (though they help); doing the kind of writing that requires me to return to previous work again and again, crafting sentences on a daily basis makes it possible for me to refine meaning: like making maple syrup, so much sap evaporates before there’s real sweetness to be had.
This push I’ve had to write fits with the season. This piece of Earth has turned it’s axis again toward the sun, and everything feels it: receding ice, new shoots, and randy stray cats who come yowling around our door looking for handouts. The shift in season also reflects another internal shift—my body is going though some sort of hormonal reordering, and my moods are wildly flailing all over the board.
So it was good to go outside in the cold bright air, soak up sun and twirl.