Unstuck
◊ L'air est parfois si doux, qu'on ferme la paupi�re - Arthur Rimbaud
Like it or not, it's spring. Technically spring doesn't start until the 21st, after the vernal equinox, but anyone willing to argue semantics in the face of evening sunlight as thick and gold as clover honey ought to sit back in a lawn chair with a vodka and tonic and listen to reason and birdsong and the faraway whine of lawnmowers until they feel better.
I don't like the change of seasons any more. When I was a kid, the precious weeks between cold rain and grueling heat made me want to throw myself out the front door at top speed with a boogie board, a bike, a pitcher of lemonade, basketballs, dozens of books, branches of honeysuckle and jasmine, and a full-size charcoal grill balanced precariously and metaphorically in my arms. The only thing louder than my body screaming for the sun was the sound of every pair of shoes I had hitting the back of the closet where they could rust there for months, for all I cared.
But I was a kid then, with more imagination than baggage. Things have changed. Every new season is followed by a small army of ghosts. And the turning of summer, with its fast slide into hot weather and soft, warm nights, is like a punch in the face.
Maybe it's just been today's barrage of scents: my oversweet hippie sunblock from last year's vegan phase; the dry carpet smell of the school bookstore where Dan worked when I met him three years ago, in the spring; the smell of sun on the redwoods at school that permeated my first months at the newsroom. Every one snapped me back to a different time with no warning.
I've spent only half the last couple of weeks right here and now, and the rest of it buried in the summers of the last five years. It's uncomfortable, unpredictable, involuntary time travel.
I'll shake it soon, I know, when the weather gets familiar and I get used to the sights and smells of summer again. In the meantime, I'll just have to deal with spring's surreal and awkward beauty.
Or I'll go with plan B: move to London where the weather's crappy all year 'round.