strike that

You Gotta Run

(when God makes you an offer)

Two thousand seven is falling away week by week and already there are crocuses – crocuses and irises on my wet walk home. It’s the beginning of the long ambiguous backpedaling Northwest spring. Two-steps-forward-one-step-back uncertainty until May.

My new years are always filled with grand ambitions but the details often catch up by Presidents Day. Or is it Presidents’ Day? And did that well illustrate my point?

I put in a half day for the City today, but I was the only one on the whole tenth floor. So I made a few maps and headed home over the bridge with Anything Goes playing in my ears. I don’t usually wear headphones but they do help with cold rainy walks, particularly when they are filled with Cole Porter. With Cole Porter there is dancing.

This afternoon I am grading my students’ (exceptionally fabulous) midterms and putting together my next lecture and Writing Letters. I am listening to folk music. I am plotting small revolutions. I am sipping soup.

When I moved to this corner of the country nearly five years ago I didn’t know what crocuses were, or irises even, and I didn’t know February as any different from March. I didn’t have a blog. I didn’t bike. I am learning the names and inner workings of things little by little. And the trajectory is good but still sometimes a Monday Morning is a hard place for Progress, and Oregon winter can be consuming. I am craving the hell-bent confident clarity of spring. But there are months between here and there, and one of them is the cruelest, so I need to buck up.

Today was the first federal holiday honoring an American Citizen. I wonder if he ever Got Shit Done on Mondays.

posted by tortaluga @ 4:40 PM