spring eats

Spring is verging again, and those jitters are jabbering, the same ones that this time last year had me flying on a spur to Seattle, longing for anything, anything but these bare-boned trees, trying to get out from under the contempt of the cold air beating through my veins, when there had been six months of it. I had never been so happy to be under those clouds of home last year. If there is anything that living with such pronounced seasons has taught me here, it is that I am not so into dramatics, and that change, it always comes. Even if in rhythms I don't prefer. At least in Washington there is some subtlety between seasons, but then growing up I didn't care about temperatures nearly as much as I longed for the sun. Clearly, I have weather issues, but something in the seasons remains redemptive if not humbling; as they pull out desires, bury sorrows, amplify memories, mock frustrations, inspire faith, and always bring on those blessed summer lights.

This time of year holds something agitating. The uncertainty and flux of winter's fading. I have to work on not making rash decisions. During most of college it was when I was making some grand international summer plans, and when the romance of that waned with post-college realities like bills, the agitation nevertheless continued, with or without the anticipation of a change in scenery. This year I am facing mutiple revolving doors, some welcome and some terrifying, and so much of it relies on employment. Still there are trails my heart has been on that seem to be coming to hills, imagining God might actually mean something by my life, realizing I have a voice, that truly truly I need to figure out how to eat food sans milk, and that scars and all I might be of some use in this world. Thoughts like the last one causing such palpatations I cannot help wanting to shake the trees for folliage, waiting for paths to develop.

Yesterday my little preschool friends and I found some bunny tracks in the snow, and I remembered winter's sweet charm (even if it has faded), but today, I looked up from the playground and swore I saw some budding in a maple tree's limbs, and for a moment at least, my wait calmed to a quiet hope, not knowing what is next, what God means by everything, what climate is right, if that is even a valid question? but anticipating the coming beauty of growth. This week alone I imagined living in five different states, while considering thoughts of different schools, this time around my feet are feeling more cautious, but I have come to a grateful indifference, so long as I am not alone. Wandering has become a part of me, whether or not I ever intended it to, and despite all my presumptuous planning, my overly ambitious attempts at understanding, not to mention my kicking and screaming, I remain, ever mercifully, under the incomprehensible gaze of Elohim.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in th ehearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

-Ecc. 3 :1-11

speak easy, mary oliver

Moving is changing is ever before me, and New York is filling my mind with cement. Waiting is wondering and I can't help wondering what it would do to me to live there, assuming the school I'm waiting on even took a second glance at me. Looking on faces of countless, anonymous, broken, strangers, day after day after day, where would my thoughts find rest between signs and windowpanes? How much breath can anyone gain in that vast yet unwild park, looking down kempt paves of grey? In splitting doubts from fears tonight and filtering past memories of decision hastes, my ears are bent to Mary Oliver, a poet from New England whe knows a thing or two about grieving, about writing...and predictably, predictably, I have wound up in some trees.


When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

-Mary Oliver