spring is like a perhaps hand

e.e. cummings is usually right about these things.

saturday, the sun permeated everything, filtering through all the green. and the air was the sharp halfway between warm and cold, smelling of salt and bread and flowers and cigarettes. spring. these are the days when, like all days, i wake up at seven. but, unlike all days, i spend from morning to afternoon grinning, stumbling over myself, wandering inside and out, falling in love with everything. everything. the weather has never been cold, but the slightly warmer weather makes me remember the small pockets of free time built into my day. time i don't have to spend worrying about things. time to poach eggs with beet greens and watch the sun filter over them in the bright morning kitchen, or, i walk down to the lake and back up and pick ornamental rosemary to rub all over my hands and purple flowers to stick in my hair.

like always in the spring, all i want is to smoke cigarillos on the porch, into the night, knees drawn up. by myself or with dear friends. except, i have bronchitis, and my cough has been vicious.

no dice.

there is the "urban jungle," and then there is the urban jungle, this mess of new and fallen flowers, houses peeking from behind groves.

the sun is sprinkled with rain. fast showers that the sun prisms through.

i am working on a long, long letter to chrissy in sierra leone. so far i have written it in four places. on the bus, in a starbucks, in my bed, on the pier. you would think that for me, woman of the long letters, it would be easy to crank out a long letter to chrissy, but it's hard because a) i've become accustomed to writing and rewriting and overwriting what i have to say on a computer and b) she and i write and feel and share and think in so many of the same ways, so having her so far away is already like KABLOW how do i condense the FIVE MONTHS i have restrained myself from writing about because her letter back hadn't gotten to me yet into ONE LETTER when we discuss minutae and the inside of our brains with rapture and precision, and then extra KABLOW she just wrote me this intensely beautiful letter that i will read over and over again that is packed with insight, knowledge, perception, sensation, information, feeling, feeling, feeling - and every particle of it resonates with me - how do i respond to every particle, properly? it's hard. but on these days, it's easier. especially sitting on the pier, looking across the water at bellevue, smelling the same air that i have smelled in amsterdam, buffalo, st. paul, barcelona, new york, luxembourg, berlin, ithaca, mukwonago - all the places where i have strong spring sense-memories.

these past weeks have been hard. i have been careful, and watchful, and nourishing, and worried, and sad, and confused, and perturbed, and convicted, and overloaded, and scared, and resigned. in that order or not, all at once or separately.

i am always learning new things. about the ways i can stretch myself, bend myself. about what my capacities and instincts are. about how to protect myself. about what compassion means. about what gentleness is. in work, and in life. there are lessons everywhere. one day, i am sure that there is little utility in sadness. the next day, i am sure that understanding the nooks and crannies of sadness is the key to relation.

i am never sure of anything.

i am worried about the world. it is another one of those cosmic whomp times. everyone is hurting. bad juju.

but. spring is a perhaps hand.

there are several rainiers out here. there is rainier, the mountain, which everyone in other parts of the country knows about. it looms out over the east side of seattle with the rising sun, usually capped in snow, a constant reminder that this place is not far from the bonafide wild. people, like rubber bands, come close to snapping, and pile into cars for the weekend, and you ask where they are going, and they simply say "rainier." reverently.

then there is rainier, the avenue. it runs miles and miles and miles through south seattle. fast traffic and many businesses packed together. far south, it sports crack addicts and frequent sirens. farther north, vietnamese delis mixed with box warehouses and bodegas. my kind of avenue. rainier avenue, in places, opens up onto vistas overlooking the sound and the olympics. after my volunteer management training on tuesday, which almost imploded my brain, brooke and i had a walking meeting which led us down rainier, then jackson, then 12th, to a park attached to an elementary school. we sat and ate vietnamese sandwiches and talked about about 1/26th of the things that we are doing wrong with volunteers, and watched a group of first graders run laps around the park. there was one, jabari, who was half a lap behind everyone else. when they were waiting for him at the end, they all started to cheer. JA-BA-RI! JA-BA-RI! JA-BA-RI! i have scarcely ever seen anything so sweet. what a boon for the slow kid, who can be permanently scarred by gym class if treated insensitively (i ought to know).

third, there is rainier, the beer. it is really, really cheap. it's like the labatt blue of the pacific northwest.

this place...i don't know about living here for a long time. i don't know what a long time means. i don't know what anything means. but i am sinking into it. i am loving it, the corners, the vistas.