Rites of Spring

"In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours."

-Mark Twain

3.9.26

Class cancelled this morning for no reason given. A little less pressure on a Monday, after a couple days of goofing around up in Corning and Canandaigua.

Although the calendar shows that we're very much in the tailings of a fairly brutal winter, all signs now point to spring.

Look down there in the median on Houston Street this morning.

No, not the blowing trash in the trees and on the ground (this is New York, after all). The green shoots. Daffodils are exploding out of the ground all over the place. Don't tell them there's snow in the forecast later in the week, another facet of seasonal change in the Northeast.

Back up on Canandaigua Lake the ice is mostly melted, retreating and forming little waterways between the ice sheets. The snow has disappeared in all but the most shady spots, and what's left won't last with temperatures in the 60s most days. The Chemung River has become a grayish torrent, snowmelt and little icebergs swelling up and over its banks.

Yesterday when we woke up in our Corning condo-treehouse, the branches right outside our window revealed buds starting to form, with birds doing perched among them doing their mating dance a few feet from our pillows.

And all the animal kingdom seems to feel its sap rising. Yesterday evening we stretched our legs after five hours in the truck by taking a walk up to Tompkins Square, an iconic East Village gathering place. We found it alive with young people out on a walk, couples sitting on benches holding hands, all enjoying the remarkable warmth after being stuck inside for weeks. Exploring together up St. Marks Place, we marveled at the sudden appearance of sidewalk diners, kids (well, thirty-ish young folks anyway) sitting in lawnchairs on their fire escapes drinking and watching the world pass by on the sidewalks below.

And what a world, indeed. Young ladies shedding their mud boots and signature black coats for brilliant colors and tall heels. Gay men dressed flamboyantly in fake leopard skin furs. The energy of the place and the moment was palpable, a tonic for two tired old people in an increasingly worrisome world.

So I should take the cancelled class as an opportunity to catch up on work, and I'll probably do a little of that, but brilliant blue skies and mild temps are summoning us out the door and into the perfect spring day. We'll eventually heed the siren song.

*Note: I thought I posted on Friday, but apparently whatever I uploaded never made it onto the page. I may try to find those babblings later.