Posts tagged with "spring"

little heart, go slow

Spring offi­cial­ly begins when I can leave the win­dows in my house open all day. This only lasts about a week though, and is also around the time I have to remem­ber to turn the stereo down at red lights and res­i­den­tial areas, a small price to pay for the sim­ple plea­sure of wak­ing up with a breeze on my face.

It’s been more than a year since I’ve been on a sched­ule. Even the num­ber of meals I have in a day has start­ed to vary. Goals and dead­lines are what help me keep pace. I know this can’t last for­ev­er, so I’m tak­ing advan­tage of the time to be free and explore and estab­lish the bonds I’ll need for the next stage of my life.

cherry tomato cheers

The strug­gle now is about bal­ance, most­ly between nour­ish­ing myself and my rela­tion­ships, as there’s rarely enough time for both late­ly. Thankfully, spring is teach­ing me patience too. I’ve stopped try­ing to con­trol every­thing, and I’m let­ting go of the ten­den­cy to want things be to be dif­fer­ent from how they are right now.

The old me would have been scared to so unre­served­ly place myself in the hands fate. Now I know I’ll be okay if I can find hap­pi­ness in how­ev­er things are at any moment.

stepping into groundlessness

I can tell I’ve had enough of win­ter when I start to enjoy the days above 0 more than the ones below. Those are the days when the air is clear with­out being frigid, and you’re only cold when sun isn’t on your skin. I know I’ll be okay when such her­alds of warm weath­er appear. Spring is com­ing just in time this year.

Constant plans and new projects are mak­ing the weeks pass as quick­ly as ever, only now I mark the time by my days with Lisa. We’ve set aside every oth­er Thursday for each oth­er, and it’s the only com­mit­ment I have in my life now, some­thing I haven’t had the plea­sure of shar­ing with some­one in a while.

chicken hearts

Step one in mak­ing cat food: get over the fact that the souls of a mil­lion chick­ens will even­tu­al­ly haunt you at night for grind­ing up their hearts.

She recent­ly start­ed help­ing me make my own cat food, which involves her schlep­ping a meat grinder, vit­a­min sup­ple­ments, and giant tub1 to my place every time, but she loves tak­ing care of my cats as much as I do. We can both agree it’s well worth the effort when see­ing how much they appre­ci­ate fresh meat and how healthy it makes them.

The rest of our time is spent with Miley Highrus and Zelda Hitzgerald, shar­ing the things we’ve grown to love by our­selves as much as the things we’ve yet to expe­ri­ence togeth­er, watch­ing Skins and learn­ing that I like Chris cause Chris likes Angie and I real­ly like Angie. Some weeks, this is the only time we have off from the rest of our respec­tive lives, and the things we can share only in per­son make it all the more spe­cial.

Return to Ravnica draft

Slinging card­board.

I can’t help but ques­tion what I know about love and hap­pi­ness and truth and the world and myself. I’ve been try­ing to let go of the things I under­stand and the way I feel, giv­ing myself time to let every­thing set­tle, but embrac­ing the ground­less­ness has­n’t been easy. It often leaves me feel­ing very much out of my ele­ment no mat­ter what I’m doing, and long­ing for some sem­blance of sta­bil­i­ty. The most I can do is keep in mind that there’s no pres­sure to be a cer­tain way, and that answers will come in their own time.

  1. I don’t have a sin­gle con­tain­er in the house that’s large enough to mix the rough­ly 10kg of chick­en parts required for a two-month batch. []

a path you didn't choose

People are for­go­ing their heavy coats for light jack­ets, even a litte skin. But win­ter still lingers in the crisp air, a reminder that it has­n’t been long since those frigid nights, but that it’ll soon be warmer and brighter. On the right days, I can wake up with the warmth of the sun on my face, dri­ve with the win­dows down, and eat din­ner in the day­light.

The cats sit intent­ly by the back door for hours, lis­ten­ing for any birds come home for Spring. They haven’t heard any since last year, and for Byron, that’s pret­ty much a life­time. Nowadays, I mea­sure time by how much heav­ier feels every day. There’s a com­fort to be found in know­ing that your cats are grow­ing and healthy.

cats eating

It feels like so much of what I used to cher­ish has fall­en to the way­side. Like I’m relent­less­ly try­ing to catch up on sleep, on time spent with friends, on gui­tar prac­tice, on var­i­ous projects, on get­ting to inbox 0. With time now such a valu­able resource, I’ve been re-eval­u­at­ing things to sal­vage as much as I can. Figuring out the dif­fer­ence between what I tru­ly enjoy and what I enjoy because I think I should, between what I need and what I want.

It’s strange to think that I’ve end­ed up here, and yet it’s hard­ly dif­fer­ent from where I was not so long ago. Life is always inter­est­ing, no mat­ter what age you are, and regard­less of how you think you’ve set­tled into it. If you’re doing it right, at least.

hope springs eternal

I awoke after five min­utes — or five sec­onds — to a changed world. For a moment, I was free of feeling…love, hate, jeal­ousy. And it all felt like hap­pi­ness.

—Maurice Bendrix, The End of the Affair

a fresh start

A fog hangs low in the streets, illu­mi­nat­ed by the indi­rect rays of an unrisen sun, leav­ing every­thing was awash in grey instead of white.

The sea­sons are chang­ing. Winter is offi­cial­ly over. It nev­er recov­ers from a day like this, when the inevitabil­i­ty of spring can be felt on your skin, as tan­gi­ble as any snowflake or rain­drop. This is when I can look for­ward to sleep­ing with the win­dows open again, a rit­u­al made only sweet­er by it’s ephemer­al­i­ty.

And with that moist smell heavy in the air, I for­get all else.

Love, Eclipses, and Other Ephemera

365 days ago, you were sit­ting at a lit­tle round table in front of me. It was a cool day, with the light of the sun com­ing through big glass win­dows, and the way you were turned cast a shad­ow on the small dim­ple on your chest. How well I came to know that expanse of skin, nev­er tak­en for grant­ed by lips or fin­ger­tips.

I was filled with noth­ing but hap­pi­ness in that moment. By that point, I planned on mar­ry­ing you one day, as I had, per­haps a lit­tle fool­ish­ly, dreamed of build­ing a life with you. The only thing left was fig­ur­ing out how to con­vince you to dream a lit­tle bit too.

muse, turned

 

A few things have hap­pened since we last spoke. Nothing impor­tant enough to men­tion if I ever bumped into an old lover and tried to make small talk. Except, per­haps, that my grand­moth­er passed away, Aaron and Karen are expect­ing anoth­er child, and I start­ed pur­su­ing a life­long dream of becom­ing an ama­teur astronomer.

In one class I learned the Sun’s dis­tance from the Earth is about 400 times the Moon’s dis­tance, and the Sun’s diam­e­ter is about 400 times the Moon’s diam­e­ter. It’s the fact that these ratios are approx­i­mate­ly equal that caus­es the Sun and Moon to appear the same size when the three astro­nom­i­cal objects line up, cre­at­ing the effect we observe dur­ing a total eclipse. If the Sun were any clos­er, we would­n’t see the fierce coro­na that bor­ders the shad­ow of the moon. Any fur­ther, and a ring of the Sun’s light would still be vis­i­ble. It’s a phe­nom­e­non that’s unique in our solar sys­tem, due to the sheer improb­a­bil­i­ty of these pre­req­ui­sites occur­ring.

eclipse

(I did­n’t take this pic­ture.)

Eclipses are a rare phe­nom­e­non. Total eclipses even more so; they occur every 18 months, at dif­fer­ent loca­tions, and nev­er last more than a few min­utes as the shad­ow moves along the ground at over 1700 km/h.

Maybe this is why some peo­ple chase them, mak­ing pil­grim­ages to loca­tions where an eclipse is pre­dict­ed to hap­pen. One group even rent­ed a plane and flew along the dark­est part of the shad­ow cast by the moon as it trav­eled over the Earth, and arti­fi­cial­ly extend­ed an eclipse from 7 min­utes to 74 min­utes. Which, in my book, is pret­ty awe­some.

People who’ve been through an eclipse give sim­i­lar accounts of the expe­ri­ence; it looks like night in a mat­ter of min­utes, it feels like the heat is being sucked out of the ground, the ani­mals get all spooked out because they know some­thing extra­or­di­nary is hap­pen­ing.

But the Moon is also drift­ing away from the Earth at a rate of 3.8 cm a year, which means there even­tu­al­ly won’t be any more total solar eclipses. We hap­pen to be liv­ing in a time when we can still expe­ri­ence them, as future gen­er­a­tions will only have sec­ond-hand accounts from our best words and pic­tures. They won’t be able to feel the change in the atmos­phere, as the Sun hides behind the Moon for that brief moment. How for­tu­nate we are to be able to expe­ri­ence this event, which not only requires the heav­en­ly bod­ies to line up, but also requires us to be at the right place on the right plan­et at the right time.

sushi

 

I began to won­der what com­bi­na­tion of forces brought us there, to sit in the warmth of spring in a sushi shop down­town. Why fate had deliv­ered you to my office one morn­ing, for you to toss your head back and gig­gle and walk away after I made some corny joke at our intro­duc­tion.

We were two trav­el­ing bod­ies on our own paths that hap­pened to align for a few spins around the sun. It was a beau­ti­ful acci­dent, a gaso­line rain­bow, an expe­ri­ence as spe­cial as it was serendip­i­tous that left me for­ev­er changed.

Every pic­ture I took was to cap­ture what I feared I’d nev­er see again, and when our paths diverged, I kept look­ing at those pho­tos, won­der­ing what kept me drawn to these mem­o­ries.

Then I real­ized it was because I did­n’t want it to end. You were my eclipse, and I was a man on that plane, chas­ing a shad­ow.

Trying to live in your love a moment longer.