There are more beautiful pictures of daffodils, but the reason I like this one is that you can see, on the left hand side of the plant, a speared leaf. This plant is in a hurry. It has grown right up through the leaf, has moved it skyward. And that is how I sometimes feel in spring, lifted up, buoyed by something larger than all of us — the life force stirring again.
Yesterday I talked with a woman on Metro. Nothing much, just a small conversation. But any pleasant exchange is a surprise when people are packed so close together. She was sitting on the aisle and the man she’d been sharing her seat with had just missed his stop. “I wish he’d told me that he needed to get out,” she said. I nodded politely. After all, I’d just taken the seat he had vacated. I was glad he was gone.
As she explained more, I learned that the man may have assumed she was getting up because she was putting her magazine away. He was trying to read her body language and (perhaps I’m making him more deferential than he actually was) save her from standing up sooner than she needed to. Was he, too, leaving cues about his intentions, cues that she wasn’t picking up?
But then she said more. “We have all this technology. We have email and cell phones and computers. But we still don’t know how to communicate.”
I would take it a step further. Perhaps we don’t communicate because we have the technology. It keeps our gaze down at our palm instead of outward, toward each other.
I know it is a bit irreverent to refer to a musical genius as a birthday boy, but it’s the first full day of spring and time for a bit of irreverence. Today is full of bird song. It doesn’t need a score. But if you’re looking for one, try this piece by Bach, born 325 years ago today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbTGUurbGTk&feature=PlayList&p=79FD3A8533D012D3&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=23
Walking in the suburbs takes its toll — there are cars to dodge, creeks to wade, paths to plod. Sometimes, rest is required. And what better way to take it than in a rocking chair, where I can sit and move at the same time.
A sure sign of warm weather in our house is when the rocking chair comes out of the garage and onto the deck. Now it sits in a place of honor; it’s a front row seat on the great outdoors.
Medieval theologians, it is said, debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. After a week of reading page proofs, I have decided that editors are the modern-day equivalent of these learned (foolish?) folk. We talk of how to space the dots in an ellipsis and we fret about the length of a dash. We discuss semi-colons as if they were old friends. Like the scholastics, we have a deep reverence for our subject. We believe it matters. Like them, I fear, we are bound for extinction.
I heard them last night on my first after-dinner walk of the spring. I ripped off my headphones and ran a few feet, straining to make sure I wasn’t mistaken, that the sound I heard was really spring peepers. March 17 seems early for the little guys, especially after the winter we’ve had, but I guess the mild weather has coaxed them from hibernation.
The sound was unmistakable; it is the first song of spring, of warm days and cold nights, of still water and marshy lowlands. It seems ages since I heard the last crickets of fall chirping ever more slowly in the chill autumn air. We’ve had five months of quiet winter evenings since then. Now, with the peepers, nights are full of sound again.
The Irish may not be great walkers, but, by God, they are great talkers. And since walking and talking are meant for each other, and since this is the day that everyone is Irish (or would like to be) let us raise a glass to the sons and daughters of Erin wherever they may be. Sláinte!
Say what you will about the time change: We early risers know it isn’t daylight saving — it’s daylight rearranging. For us, springing forward is a step backward into night. But to be honest, I’m relieved.
I welcome the inky starts to my day, the hush of the hours before dawn. Dark mornings are the best cover-up going; no makeup needed. Dark mornings are also easy on the eyes; they’re a gradual salvo to the sun.
In a few weeks I’ll see light and color again on my way to work, the birds will be singing, the air will be soft. But for now, for a few more weeks, darkness reigns. Daylight rearranging — bring it on.
(A town stirs to life, the 18th-century town of Williamsburg, Virginia.)
This weekend’s walks were as much liquid as solid. Moisture clung to my hair and face. My breath came in clouds, and my skin felt clammy and alive. It was invigorating to walk in the mist, to feel heaven and earth as one. The weekend’s weather brought to mind a nursery rhyme that begins, “One misty moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather, I chanced to meet an old man, dressed all in leather.” I’m not sure leather was the best garment choice this weekend.
Today as we “spring forward,” the one clock in our house we won’t rush to reset is our charming cuckoo, our most independent-minded timepiece. Like a retired guard dog that barely lifts his head when burglars stroll off with the family silver, our cuckoo long ago stopped being a reliable time keeper. It’s been elevated to clock emeritus, the pulse of our house. As for keeping time, well, let’s just say we don’t use it when we have to catch a train.
But we treasure our cuckoo clock just the same. Its tick-tock is the rhythm of breathing; it sounds as if it were meant to be. Besides, we have too few items in our possession that are this human – that work simply and not always efficiently, that can be fixed at home, and that when broken cannot be immediately replaced. Things like these are more than possessions; they are companions. Put enough of them in a house and you make it your own.