Bulbous
In the wake of rain storms, the grass is the vibrant green of childhood drawings rendered in Crayola crayon, the trees sport tiny fragile buds that seem to grow more bold each time I blink, and the flowers gain new bedfellows each day. It all feels so painfully optimistic. Spring is developing around me as in a polaroid photo where a blank darkness magically becomes vividly colorful.
This weather is making me rather less melancholy than you might imagine ( admittedly, few things do). I take long walks at dusk and feel a restlessness, a sense of this new expansiveness, and think perhaps a lowly flower bulb and I have a lot in common in the Springtime. Does a flower bulb feel buried-alive during winter? Does it feel a sense of claustrophobia upon awakening in April? Anthropomorphizing plants is a bit of a seasonal syndrome for me - I project my own issues onto them all year long. For example: in Autumn, I feel the trees are sad, nay, in mourning as their leaves all wither and blow away. In Winter, I perceive the trees as being depressed and sometimes spiritually dead... woe!
Speaking of plants:
This morning, if a person happened to be outside of my door and perchance glanced up at my second floor neighbors, they would have seen a strange bald man leaning out of his window with a huge Guatemalan machete hacking at a tree. I got a lovely kick out of the spectacle (my upstairs neighbor wielded the machete with glee). Lest one think this is a typical case of a city-dweller venting primitive rage on innocent plant-life, let me state that the tree had grown too bold! With branches scratching at the walls all night and morning and pounding in demanding-fashion every time the wind got fierce, it needed to be taught a lesson. I have such trouble falling asleep and despite its best efforts, morning brew couldn't even do anything about that tree problem (in the scheme of things, it was just a minor tree-haircut, anyway).
I'd never seen a machete in action (in my mind they were confined to movies set in rainforests - usually ending in some trauma) but it turns out machetes are practical as well as stylish - that blade cut through the wood like butter. Some day, if I live in suburbia, I will take much pride in collapsing my neighbors' relaxed sanity by pruning all of my shrubbery with a machete.
This weather is making me rather less melancholy than you might imagine ( admittedly, few things do). I take long walks at dusk and feel a restlessness, a sense of this new expansiveness, and think perhaps a lowly flower bulb and I have a lot in common in the Springtime. Does a flower bulb feel buried-alive during winter? Does it feel a sense of claustrophobia upon awakening in April? Anthropomorphizing plants is a bit of a seasonal syndrome for me - I project my own issues onto them all year long. For example: in Autumn, I feel the trees are sad, nay, in mourning as their leaves all wither and blow away. In Winter, I perceive the trees as being depressed and sometimes spiritually dead... woe!
Speaking of plants:
This morning, if a person happened to be outside of my door and perchance glanced up at my second floor neighbors, they would have seen a strange bald man leaning out of his window with a huge Guatemalan machete hacking at a tree. I got a lovely kick out of the spectacle (my upstairs neighbor wielded the machete with glee). Lest one think this is a typical case of a city-dweller venting primitive rage on innocent plant-life, let me state that the tree had grown too bold! With branches scratching at the walls all night and morning and pounding in demanding-fashion every time the wind got fierce, it needed to be taught a lesson. I have such trouble falling asleep and despite its best efforts, morning brew couldn't even do anything about that tree problem (in the scheme of things, it was just a minor tree-haircut, anyway).
I'd never seen a machete in action (in my mind they were confined to movies set in rainforests - usually ending in some trauma) but it turns out machetes are practical as well as stylish - that blade cut through the wood like butter. Some day, if I live in suburbia, I will take much pride in collapsing my neighbors' relaxed sanity by pruning all of my shrubbery with a machete.