spring, continued

Let’s continue the seasonal theme.

How about this caption: I have my love to keep me warm, as applied to this terribly under-dressed couple (I was wearing a coat and I was cold):




[Notes from a run down the hill for a quick espresso before my afternoon class.]

spinach days

I admit it – I’ll miss my cold, gray, biweekly walks home. The long way. Our CSA winter spinach deliveries will end soon and so will the need to walk over to the pickup spot and after, because there is no good bus connection, to walk home.

It’s a dreary walk. The camera hangs around my neck, but I am rarely tempted to use it. Oh fine, today, for the emerging colors of spring...





And sure, when I rest the spinach on a bench outside the pickup spot (we all received a gift: a dozen eggs – so beautifully brown that I’m planning the rest of the week’s menu around them!)...





But otherwise – no.

The walk is a transition thing: you can really loosen up around the edges if you keep the pace brisk.

Today I need more than the four miles and so I stray toward Hoyt Park – oh, add another mile or two. It would be tough to call it a pretty place now, in March, but to me, it has its gray calm.





Mainly, I need the extra miles. No, not airline miles, not today, but walking miles. Even if they’re almost colorless.


Approaching home, I notice the flowers again. I’m hanging in there. Spring break comes this week-end.




On my window sill, there is this bird and he just will not leave.

words

I trot down the hill to get an espresso before my afternoon class. Perhaps trot is the wrong word. This young woman trots.





By comparison, I saunter at a slow pace.

On the way back up the hill, I am even slower. Smelling the roses, so to speak. And I hear this conversation behind me. Two young men, discussing a love interest of one of them. She is, you know, just a very nice person. Really nice. The kind that you meet and say – I have dibs on her. And then they move on to a retelling of an incident in class where a professor asked for some ungodly amount of work from the lot of them.

I think to myself that I have never heard a relational matter summarized so quickly and, I suppose, so succinctly.


I'm remembering a conversation with my occasional traveling pal. He'd been telling me about an exchange he had had with a friend, concerning travels with, well, his traveling companion. After a few brief sentences, he paused. That’s it? That’s all you said? – I asked. What else more is there to say? – he countered, genuinely puzzled.


In the evening, I walk up to the Capitol Square, where I play with my camera and windowpane  reflections and all the usual nonsense that seems so fun when you’re doing it but utterly silly in retrospect.




Isn't that so often the case with reflections...


The day ends well. I feast in ways that I rarely feast these days.





And as I am with friends whom I see too rarely, I give a summary of my most recent thoughts on travel and traveling buddies, and I do this sparingly and succinctly (I think). I can almost hear someone asking – that’s it? Is that all you can say about it? And I have to admit that the answer would be yes.

Sometimes, you don’t have to say a lot. Sometimes, you need say very little and still it is brilliantly clear what it is that you’ve just said. Sometimes.

train

First thing each morning I check airfares. There’s an early summer trip looming, but the fares have stubbornly not budged from levels beyond what I would call reasonable. Ed’s tolerance is even lower. I shut down the various search engines and walk away without a booking.

What if we use miles? He asks. No, not for this. The taxes are so high that you feel scraped from all sides – goodbye miles, good bye savings.

What if we go this way... we trail off in speculative analysis of how to get from point A (somewhere in the Midwest) to point B (somewhere across the ocean) spending as little as possible.

So many combinations, so many frustrations. I give up yet again. Work pushes thoughts of fares aside.

But not entirely. The what if train keeps spitting out options and ideas and I click on this website and another, following strategies that some would regard as mildly nutty.

So many early hours of the day have been spent in this way! I sometimes wonder if the $100 saved in the end are worth the sheer effort involved. And of course, I’m now just a little more pressed for time as I dash out to catch the bus to campus.

...A bus that I manage to miss by ten seconds.

And so now it’s back to biking, even as I swear winter is nipping at my neck, just to show that it’s not entirely a done deal.

If I thought the lake would be ice free and balmy, I thought wrong.






Late in the afternoon, I push the bike up the hill home. In the condo, I take out the books I need for tomorrow’s classes, but I can’t concentrate. I call my occasional traveling companion. What if we took the cheap flight north, then south... He counters: no, what if we took it north east, then switched airlines...

Okay! I answer.
Just like that...? Okay...?

Yes, let’s just do it!

Let’s think about it.

The train that never stops.

a field of crocuses

A green day. My balcony is stripped clean of last year’s debris. I make way for the plants of spring!

The day is bright and honest. I honestly clean the house and brightly set out for a walk in the Shorewood neighborhood. (Ed and I stroll there when there is no time for an outing.)










Snowdrops, blue drops, fantastic, yes, utterly pretty.

But I’m looking for something else... Crocuses! Yes, I see the flower that first caused me utter delight, fifty years ago, on a springtime mountain slope of Poland.





I saw them then and gasped.

Today, you might conclude I’m more jaded. I’ve lived through 56 springs, I’ve seen my share of crocuses.


And yet, on the Shorewood hills, in the few minutes where I leave books and shops behind and step out to enjoy the brilliance of the day, I am, once more, utterly enthralled!





In the evening, I sit with shop friends at a neighborhood hangout and sip a margarita...





... and think – this is such a momentous day. Such a good day. Such a spring forward to crocuses day!

to spring

First day of spring. That should mean something, even in Wisconsin, no? I love this season that parsimoniously delivers increments of better times!

It’s a season that does not like to commit.

I woke up to this today:




When I was thirteen and in my last year of school in New York (I moved back to Poland after), our end of school year field trip was to Jones Beach. I wore my new two-piece swimsuit. Hardly risqué: the bottom went up all the way to my navel and the top is something I’m sure today’s kids would wear to school on a warm day.

We sang chuck, chuck, bo buck, banana fanna, fo (etc) and in the hot June air we thought we were the coolest in town.

My daughters took their “end of grade school” field trip in June, too. To Noah’s Ark water park. Wisconsin Dells. They sat huddled in their hoodies and sweat pants, not wanting to get wet in the 50 degree weather.


By midday today all snow had melted and I rolled my eyes in the way one does when one wants to appear in control.

Outside, the crocuses were a little droopy. But at least a handful withstood the tough night.





To spring, then! (And all the surprises that come with it.)

game

I’m at the shop, watching wet snow fall on passing cars. Of course, we all knew it would be like this, but still, it warms me not at all to see the bleak wetness outside.

Even this morning, I took a chance on one last ride (in March) to work, taking one last glance at the receding ice on the waters.





One smile for the worker taking down a sign on Union Terrace (so ironic).





One lonely person by the icy water’s edge.





I’m wearing a lighter jacket and pedaling home, I push myself to go faster, trading a windy ride for a more energetic and therefore heat generating workout.


In the late afternoon, the skies look dismally wintry. Ed says – let’s have a game of tennis. Tennis?! We haven’t played since Hatteras, North Carolina. What happened in the ten months since?

I’d forgotten how bad you are at it – he tells me, perhaps to goad me into trying harder. But my mind drifts to thoughts of the long-term. Beyond the semester kind of long-term.

I miss three more volleys and say – let’s go home.

still biking

And in one fell swoosh, the ice broke into jagged slates and sank into the lake’s depth.

That’s what I thought would happen. And each morning, I expect to see an expanse of blue water, and each morning, I see ice slowly recede, but not totally, Not just yet.


Spring break will come late this year. And for me, that’s a good thing. I wake up and I work. And it will be thus for the week ahead, until we all break for the break.

But, even as I bike furiously to work (I had a late start today), I allow myself a pause. Just for a minute, to admire those who are now swimming (they couldn’t have just a few days earlier).





And on the way home, again, I admire those who are swimming.









It's  quite lovely. Swimming, flying, all of it.





How wonderful that for a brief moment this last week, I could pretend that the season has shifted and I could now forevermore bike to work.

In the alternative, I would be stuck in my office, feeling envious of those who were outside. Me, watching the blue shirt against a blue sky and a blue window -- feeling blue all the while.




No. I watched ducks duck and geese fly and muskrats glide. Wisconsin is a good pace to be. When you have a bike. And spring runs ahead of itself. Fleetingly.

late writing

It’s late.

I should never write when it’s late. A night post is always one I rush to reread in the morning because I know it will have been influenced by a late night madness that, upon an early morning glance, appears slightly off the edge. I breathe a sigh of relief if it withstands the scrutiny of predawn hours. I correct a typo or two, and I get on with the day.



The day? Well, I biked again to work and that was fine, brilliant even. I appreciated how much of the lake had melted since yesterday’s photo. Take a look:









But give me a wee bit of credit: it’s still mostly a sheet of ice out there on Mendota, and horefrost on top of frozen waters means that it really looks not unlike the Arctic  (as best as I can imagine that to look).





And note, too, that we are, this week, bedazzled by unseasonably warm temps. Fifties, sixties – wonderful stuff that typically belongs to May.





Yet, don’t be too envious. Fact is that when I ride the bike next to the frozen lake early in the morning, the air is chilly. A touch below freezing. And that’s before the wind strikes my face and gives it a good lashing.
 
You can say this about Madison in spring: mornings are not the same as afternoons. Sleeping time is not the same as waking time. Night posts are not the same as posts written in daylight hours. And yet, it all spins and tumbles, and ultimately you cannot separate one from the other. (Except for this one obvious truth: mornings are colder than afternoons.)

expectations

The switch to spring, no matter how temporary, leaves me discombobulated. A student tells me that the spring semester has been harder because, well, winter is just so tough for people who need to bear down and work.

Except now, suddenly, it is spring!

Am I ready?

Sure, I’m biking to work now. That’s good.





The lake, half solid, but in places, quite liquid.


My noon sprint down Bascom Hill for an espresso is easy. Pleasant even.








[Just curious: what would you do if you spilled half your coffee on your white shirt minutes before going in to class?]

At the same time, the “no excuses” season is suddenly thrust upon us. Don’t sit still. Don’t not make plans. Look hard at what your next six months will be like. Because after that, it’s winter all over again. And the inevitable return to sleepy time.

But now, in March, aren’t I supposed to be leaping forward? Producing at the next level of energy and grand inspiration?


Thank goodness next week promises to be cool again. I'll get my bearings then. Because really, I’m not yet primed for this bout of good weather. I'm still throwing cold water on my face.


Biking home along the lake shore path, I think how transitions are tough. Though not for everyone. I pedal past the rowing house and I notice the team's out and practicing. Not on the lake yet. Something about the fragile ice cover perhaps. But they're ready. Even if it is mid March, they're ready.




Oh, to shake off that coffee soaked shirt (so to speak) and get the muscles working again!

Soon. It just takes me a while to figure out the pulse of the new season.

ah, life!

Every once in a while, I want to write a post that merely says – ah, life!

Because it is just so unpredictable and haphazard. You think you’re on this course and then you learn that no, you are not. Major adjustments need to be made. And then you end up in being elsewhere, completely elsewhere, and hey! That’s not so bad! Or, is it where you were to begin with?

Anyway, it was a beautiful day. We were sprung a spring day – the type you would call average for May, but unbelievably special in March. It is relative, after all.

I biked to work. Sure, diehards never stop biking, not even for the winter months, but I’m not a diehard, I’m a softy at heart. I take the bus when it gets too cold.

It was a fantastic first ride to work of 2010.




Even though in the morning, the air is nippy enough for me to feel cold through the slits in my bike helmet. Or maybe my scalp simply hasn't properly dried from the morning shower.

The lake, still frozen, but just barely, causes me to stop and admire it so often that I am almost late for my 8:45 meeting.






After, in the late afternoon, I catch a few glimpses of the good life...









Am I envious? Nah. Soon. I'll be out strumming chords soon. In the meantime, I wallow in the unpredictability of each day. From good to disappointing to ... well, you never know. Ah life, right?

consider the good times

At what point do you get tired of recognizing all the obstacles, the impediments, the forces working against you? When do you stop wanting to hear about the differences between you and ...the other person?

A friend once told me – consider nothing of consequence in February. It’s a terrible month and we just don’t think straight then. Well fine, but it’s March.

I had warned my occasional traveling companion that we should not let this Sunday go to waste. It is, in fact, the last weekend day when we will be in Madison together and neither of us has to work. That confluence of good things will not happen again until mid May, at the earliest. And add to it splendid rays of sun. It’s obvious: on this day, we should head out.

But it’s not easy to jump into fun when you have been outside of it for days on end. Many procrastinate when they have work to do. Ed and I so often procrastinate when we have as a goal nothing more than the pleasure of exploring the world. Just let me finish this article... Sure, yes, but first let me ...


In this kind of a mood it’s so clear that we need to work off our pent up ... something. A bike ride? Surely the movement will be good for us.

We pick an easy twenty mile ride. Just a few hills, nothing taxing. There’s a wind out there and it is our first ride of 2010.

We swing by Ed’s farmette to dewinterize my bike and to pick up his. And here you can see that my occasional traveling buddy does have an affectionate side... As demonstrated toward his greeting to Isis...




We drive east. Past the pig farm (greetings from Wisconsin!)...










...then on to McFarland. Yes – the starting point of our last ride of 2009. How different it is now, at the cusp of spring! Oh, it’s still gray and nothing is budding yet, but there is that feeling that we are on the verge of something brilliant. Any day now.





We need this ride. Believe me, we need the reminder.





(Even if every few miles one of us throws out a punch at the other.)





We circle Lake Kegonsa, mount the final hills, pause to watch the sandhill cranes pick whatever is left in the fields after last year’s harvest...










... and face the last stretch against the wind toward the village where we left the car.

Do you have to drive with your knee?

I'm in control...

Oh, how wonderful it is to be on familiar turf again!

random thoughts

Loneliness is not always pushed aside by the presence of others.

You can be a kid at home with your sulky, troubled parents and feel excruciatingly lonely. Or, with friends at a dinner and suddenly you feel the ache. Piercing.

To me, all three in this photo (young woman, sitting alone, and father and daughter at the bar), encountered on my way to the shop, appear lonely. I could be projecting, but this was my impression.




On the other hand, it is also true that loneliness can be puffed down by non-people things. Flowers, for example. Anything else? No, can’t think of anything else.

days of wine and coffee

I’m the kind of friend who, when asked to go out for a glass of wine these days...





...orders coffee. It has come to this. Sandwiched between law school work and moonlighting, the welcome pause brings the unwelcome realization that I cannot show up at the shop after a glass of cabernet.

Oh well.

(Ed comments – I have never seen you order red wine for yourself. That’s because cheap white wine is ok, whereas cheap red wine is undrinkable.)

I leave the shop tired, but very aware of the fact that I am just heading home, while so many others are heading out.




I'm glad that I am heading home.