I've heard in the spring we'll live again

Spring has been winking at me for a month.

I've been winking back.

Daffodils defy sidewalks and tulips politely smile at each morning's sleep-drunk pageant of shivering dogs and damp coat hems.

Plum and pear tree blossoms blush at their own audacity and laugh pinkly down with the rain onto the concrete cold of a city still yawning in its winter bed.

Evening masquerades as Afternoon with the idle sun forgetting its appointments.

A crush of petals paste over windows like rice clinging to a bridal veil - the promise of a honeymoon on the steps of a stone-gray church.

The smell of new grass mixes with soursweet cedar.

Warm shoulders and numb toes.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

My neighborhood farmer's market re-opens soon. I'm itching to wander vendor to vendor, fruit stand to flower stall, to have happy Sunday mornings saturated with tastes and colors as fresh and familiar as summer rain.

In the meantime, la nouvelle saison has inspired an Art Nouveau kick; the rapture and beauty found in the blend of women and nature have romanced me a bit (and have maybe made me a tad envious, as well). Alphonse Mucha's 1896 Season series (Spring, in particular) inspired a little seasonal drawing of my own.

Spring Girl

She looks happy, I think. Blissful, even. And that hair. 

Seattle is slow to thaw this year, but if I'm lucky - and if the weather obliges - I'll be sharing her spring joy soon enough.

Stack Phrases

Over the last few weeks, I've let the cracks in my psyche grow over with routine. I am nourished by good words, spoken and written and sung, and by good company. I tried to visually approximate how my days tend to stack up:

Eliot, stop looking so pleased with yourself. As soon as you open your eyes,

you're going to get distracted by a bird outside and flip the eff out.

Aside from my doodle-doing direly needing work and desperately needing a defined style... this is about right. Not necessarily in this order, but these are the devils, the details, of my days.

The irksome-but-painfully-loved Eliot.

The books.

The running and strengthening of my body.

The healthy food (so much fruit, you guys).

The less-healthy food (well, red wine has antioxidants, so all you free radicals can suck on that).

The tea, the coffee.

The doodling and sometimes-art.

The writing.

The music music music.

And The Future.

That Box O' Future weighs heavily, but Eliot's ears (and my shoulders) seem to be handling the load, more or less. I'm getting pretty interested in a few Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) programs, and depending on my state of mind, the prospects are either a balm or a briarpatch in my little crisis. A crisis which, at 25, I'm learning to accept as acceptable.

The cracks are still there, of course - tiny fissures and fine lines in the underbrush - but I feel comfortably me again, and that's a lovely thing.

I'm warming up, just in time for Spring.