The Yellow House

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls. » Read more «

This week, thoughts banged against the walls of my head. Certain moments hit me in the gut. I wanted to tell you about a dream I had: I stood in the kitchen with my mom, frying up strips of bacon in a cracked ceramic dish. They crinkled into little abalone, seashell-like cracklings. We ate them, our fingers greasy. They were salty and good. I woke up crying and craving bacon. » Read more «

I don’t know what it is about these astronomical-seasonal days that I find significant (beyond the obvious, “first day of spring”), but regardless, I like to mark them somehow.
I’m not into astrology, but I learned that in celestial sea navigation, “first point of Aries” is what the spring equinox was called. Kind of esoteric. I dig it. Here’s to the new season.

Spring is really something, huh? No matter how many times it comes around, I still have a giddy, butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling when things start busting out and warming up. All winter, we’ve scurried from place to place, bundled up, a bit reluctant to spread out further than the warm, safe circles we inhabit. Then, things get crazy! Color, after a season of sepia tones. The time changes! It is still light out when I get home from work.All of a sudden, the world is a place where baby kale plants and tiny white flowers exist. You dig in the ground with a shovel, shyly, almost, testing the waters. Before you know it, you’re outside in your wellies, working in the garden and drinking a can of beer left in your fridge from a shindig that took place at your house with a bunch of kids home from college. There is an untold amount of mud under your fingernails. It feels good! You ignore the fact that your new house appears to have a giant wasp population setting up residence under its eaves, because you’re in such a good mood.
Spring, I’m telling you. Nothing like it.

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In truth, I’ve been glad to have a brief retreat from this space. I’m a person who enjoys (perhaps over-much) stepping back and assessing. What am I doing here? Increasingly and amazingly, after a year, that question could now be phrased, What are we doing here? We! Writer, reader! That change of pronoun is exciting itself. Thanks for that, everyone.

Can I tell you something, though? When I step back and do my assessing, I feel distinctly uneasy.

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