highlights and interstices...

Sometimes I liken spring with yom kippur, the jewish holiday for forgiveness. Likely, it's because I've always felt that Yom Kippur falls at the wrong time of the year, so close to the barreness of winter. Who wants to be forgiven to only face the hardship of frozen earth?

Judiasm might disagree, that first day of springtime, to me, is akin to a wash of sunlight forgiving all of my wintry wrongs. I wonder if people in california realize how good they have it--but then--how can they? We forget how wonderful good weather is by September. There are so many opposites in the world, happiness begets sadness which begets happiness. Do people in warmer weather thus need less? Today, i felt like i needed my legs and nothing more, that i needed a patch of grass to lie and strech my arms wide and nothing more. But, then, I've always been easy to please.

I leant a book to a workmate, which I finally got back today after many months.

This is one of my all-time favorite poems and it's called Highlights and Interstices and it's by Jack Gilbert

We think of lifetimes as mostly the exceptional
and sorrows. Marriage we remember as the children,
vacations, and emergencies. The uncommon parts.
But the best is often when nothing is happening.
The way a mother picks up the child almost without
noticing and carried her across Waller Street
while talking with the other women. What if she could keep
all of that? Our lives happen between the memorable. I have lost
two thousand habitual breakfasts with Michiko. What i miss most about
her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.

I try to think of the commonplaces of this year--of how many hours I've spent at this chair and desk and I can't recall. It feels like hours falls from me the way one drops lose change into a parking meter. The way one pays dues. If only I could find a way to reconcile the everyday with the extraordinary. Or, feel happiness about the constant daily grind. The giddiness of spring will help, but what i love about this poem is the line about the mother scooping up the child. It's the perfect analogy because we've all seen that carefree moment but we all know that the child grows up too soon. And we--we move and find new desks and new jobs. I'm working on appreciating my health and also each individual experereince, mundane as it may seem as the time.

And right now--that means leaving the workplace early and catching some rays! wa-hoot-enn-anny!