Grass

Spring is gaining momentum and that means some kind of weight lifts from our shoulders, like an invisible machine attaches itself to the dead feeling long winters drape over us and pulls it away. And socks are becoming less and less important, which is a good thing because the holes are eating up my feet anyway. I think my musical preferences are becoming less and less about the dumps of a blanketed world and more about the recovery of the grass as it learns to open up its tiny collapsed lungs and breathe again. That is: less Bon Iver and more Kite Flying Society and Page France, because they are bright, but not too bright. They have songs about dazzling things, about grass, about the liberating fresh air; but they also have songs about things being too dazzling, and the pollution that overtakes the grass. It is a time of recovery, true, but it is hesitant. It's confusing. And that's what I mean to say: for the first time in my life, I am seeing spring sprout around me in a slightly different environment. An environment that threatens cold, but a snowless cold. But the wonderful thing about spring is the visual evidence that it exists: watching snow piles fall away, finding alternate pathways around muddy areas, remembering the patterns in the cracks of the sidewalks previously piled too full with invasive snow. And I can't help focusing on that absence.