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Twenty springs ago, we got little Leroy from the pound. I sat in the back seat with him as he squirmed and licked my face. When we got home, Mom told me to call you. She said, considering what had happened, a playdate would be good. She told me your Grandpa jumped off his roof last week. Your dad was there, too. He watched his father sail through the air and return his cells to the breeze with a great plop.
The next day, your dad shaved his head and joined the monastery. I heard my mom consoling your mom on the phone the night he left. We brought you homemade lasagna the next day.
You come over. We sit petting Leroy, his fur bunching in tight brown scruffs, revealing his fragile bones. He smells of vanilla and fresh-cut grass. He yawns his high-pitched puppy yawn, and you say, "It sounds like a siren."
I don't know why, but ever since that day, when I hear a dog yawn, I recall that: "It sounds like a siren." I see the evening sun flicker on your arm as you pet Leroy's new body. I see your dad dressed in his KÄį¹£Äya standing on my roof. I watch him jump. The orange fabric flaps silently, engulfing his face like flames. His eyes are wide open, and he looks pleased. He lands headfirst on the pavement with a moist crunch. He sits motionless, ass in the air, halfway through a final somersault.
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Spring calls me back into the world. Soon, Iāll be at patio parties and cookouts. Iāll loom in the background, realizing Iāve never learned how to make friends.
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Every year, the night daylight savings begins, I stay up and watch the clock turn from 1:59 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. A second and an hour fly by in a single instant. Iām reminded that everything is a lie.
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Itās the time of year when the crows dive-bomb me, trying to fly off with my beanie. āHavenāt you heard? Itās rude to wear a hat in the presence of the Equinox! The Great Gray is over; brush your damn hair and stand up straight! People are going to see you again; would it kill you to be presentable? Would it kill you to smile more? I wonāt ask againā¦ā
I read somewhere that if you stare at them, they wonāt attack. I spend most of my time in nature scanning the inky eyes of Murders, refusing to relinquish my beanie.
For all my talk of change, I sure go to great lengths to hide from it.
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As the weather warms, ol' Zoe slows. She drags my patience out of hibernation. Walks once traversed in five minutes, become twenty-minute odysseys. She pants and marshalls her dusty hips into a limp. She'll plop down on random lawns, forcing me to wave to a neighbor and say, "It's a scorcher for this old girl!" She'll sit there smiling, drool dripping from her jowls, postured as if she owns the world.
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Every Spring, you catch the fever. Your legs become restless, and your eyes dart. You itch to leave your body. You wish for twisters to emerge, without warning, from the severe clear, to knock you down and drag you wherever they damn well please.
I pray for the dark to return and smite your will.
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āThe local is where we are present. It is the place we know and the place where we are knownā ā
When the trees return, I become unmooredāthey are no longer twigs; they have identities.Ā
I can tell you nothing about them. The red one, the pink one, the smelly oneāthatās the best I can do.Ā
Turns out, I know nothing about my surroundings.Ā
I couldnāt tell you the name of the tree that has tapped on my window for four years, the name of the bird my dog is chasing, or the body of water I walk to on the weekends.Ā
I operate like a mist, uninterested in roots, yet I love this place; thereās magic here.
Maybe itās easier to love something if it remains nameless.
Maybe you canāt love something without knowing it.
Maybe Iām incapable of being local, uninterested in being known.
I donāt know.
If I must know the name of something, Iāll snap a picture and send it to my Dad. Heāll write backĀ Araucaria araucana, or some such nonsense.Ā
Then Iāll forget I asked.
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The little specs blossoming from the long-barren trees remind me that life can return. It makes me anxious. Spring promises rebirth. It's ripe with opportunities to step into alterity, flee the winter doldrums, get back on the horse, and inch closer to an ideal.
I resent this pressure to change. I'm tired of growth. Why can't it just be March?
I used to assign myself Springtime resolutions. For the last few years, the goal has been the same:
[2018] I want to rekindle my passion for music.
[2019] I want to rekindle my passion for music.
[ā¦]
[2023] I want to rekindle my passion for music.
As the sun strengthens and illuminates the dust blanketing my guitar case, I ask myself, at what point is the flame dead? At what point does Spring become a reminder of what has died in me?
This Spring is a period of mourning.
Maybe after I mourn, I'll become thankfulāthankful I'm no longer building a vapid life upon peat. I'll no longer be deluded by trendy aphorisms or tempted into believing the impossible. I'll learn how to self-resuscitate as I watch the flame piddle out.
I can't say for sure that my moment of reinvention will come; all I can do right now is beg:
Dear Spring,
Please stop making me hope again. It was hard enough to reallocate the energy from my dead dreams without them taking me with them. It was hard enough to admit defeatāto be the kid with the broken arm, coming to terms with his puny mortality as the whole town signs his cast like mourners at a wake.
Nihilism is less painful than the prospect of renewed hope. I've accepted my personal nothingness, and with this comes a certain power. I cultivate nihilism to protect me from the part of myself thirsting to believe I am something. What is there to do but pick up the pieces and proceed with sober expectations? I'd be a fool if I let you dupe me into slapping on another pair of wax wings to chase the sun. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twiceā¦
After all, Yeats said, "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." I'll choose to believe that and renounce my convictions. I don't want to grow or actualize my full potential or shoot for the moon. I just want to hide in mild comfort, liking my wounds and cursing impossibility with whatever dignity I have left.
I beg you to leave me be. Spare me your promise of new beginnings. Just as you can't spray Fabreeze on a dumpster fire expecting it to become a field of tulips, I can't say, "Everything will work out," and expect it to be true.
In this period of mourning, please let me rest without guilt, for once.
Respectfully,
Will
I've never been able to be passionate about music and writing at the same time. They both end up being all-consuming. To switch back and forth is the most I can do. So I do one for a few months (or years!) then the other. It feels like a kind of failure but I'm trying to accept it.
Gorgeous af.