Thursday, March 30, 2017

Cabin Fever

Play Me a Tune

It's a stare-down with the buds this week.

When. are. you. going. to. bloom.  I am watching for the initial gesture and have found it on one particular tree/bush that I walked by today: tiny pink flowers.  I saw it again on a couple other bushes: q-tip sized yellow dots.  There is always this seeming moment where suddenly everything has sprung and I am waiting to catch it.

Spring is the time of year that you sit outside despite the cold-ish temperatures.  This evening, we sat outside at El Sancho taco shop underneath the outdoor heaters and watched the thick gray swarming clouds blanket the mountains.  Half the sky had traces of baby blue while the other half was a gray watercolor disaster.

It's been a thick winter.  By thick, I mean work-heavy and living in the woods of work by which - when you finally get out of them - you cautiously utter, "I think we're out of the woods," fearing that the universe will hear you and shoot fire down on you.  I went for a massage today, after carrying the tension in every inch of my back, and departed with the massage therapist telling me that there was still so much work needing to be done.  She smiled eagerly to help me unknot every last fiber of my being - that had lived up to the metaphor of being stretched thin - by digging deep into the tenuous knottiness that are my back, shoulders, and neck.

I actually like the natural woods and am excited to return to them, once the weather tips the scale in favor of more Summer-ish temperatures.  I found this lovely poem here:

“Jailbreak”
by Maya Spector

It’s time to break out —
Jailbreak time.
Time to punch our way out of
the dark winter prison.
Lilacs are doing it
in sudden explosions of soft purple,
And the jasmine vines, and ranunculus, too.
There is no jailer powerful enough
to hold Spring contained.
Let that be a lesson.
Stop holding back the blossoming!
Quit shutting eyes and gritting teeth,
curling fingers into fists, hunching shoulders.
Lose your determination to remain unchanged.
All the forces of nature
want you to open,
Their gentle nudge carries behind it
the force of a flash flood.
Why make a cell your home
when the door is unlocked
and the garden is waiting for you?

Thank goodness for gardens, but it takes so much work to create them.  May it be time for the arts to flourish, the fighters, the females, the everything and everyone that makes this world different and beautiful.  

Jailbreak time. 

(closing video and thoughts from Sufjan Stevens)


Mug Time.

Ander and Buckley

Beverages

Foods

Birthday Girl

Raise the River!

Chillax

Birthday Gifts

Balloon Time

Balloon Time Part 2

Telephone Pictionary + Dog

Telephone Pictionary Part 2

Dogs + People