Walking into the cold northeasterly wind, bits of white blew into my face.
I still remember the May snowstorm twenty years ago; no electricity for a week.
But these bits of white were apple blossom petals, blown off the tree by the wind.
This was on one of the street corners where immigrants protested yesterday.
The apple blossom petals blow off to reveal green new leaves emerging.
This morning, as I was getting ready to head up to the church, I happened to look across the street at the maple tree there. Our apartment is on the second floor, so I was looking right into the middle of the tree, the outermost branches still mostly covered with its tiny crimson flowers, although some of the flowers are dropping and the seeds are starting to form.
Some small birds were flitting through the branches. They were flying among the maple blossoms, presumably cropping either insects insects in the flowers, or the nectar from the flowers. This kind of behavior is typical of warblers, so I walked over the the window hoping for a glimpse of some brightly-colored mirgratory warbler. But is was plain ordinary House Sparrows engaging in this warbler-like behavior. Perhaps this is an example of an invasive species which is adept at surviing in a relatively hostile urban environment, filling an ecological niche usually filled by another species.
More rain has come tonight.
Rain spatters now and again on skylights and roof.
What better sound for sleeping?
Laundry night: I load up the car with the duffel bag full of dirty clothes and head out to the my favorite laundromat, the one with an attendant. The big TV in the corner is on, with some inane show about celebrities, so once the wash is going I run out to do some shopping. A light rains starts while I’m in the store. Back to put the clothes in the dryer; now the TV has a game show, so I sit in the car and begin reading Ned Rorem’s memoir, Knowing When To Stop. I decide I like his grim but refreshing words:
Life has no meaning. We’ve concocted the universe as we’ve concocted God. (Anna Noailles: “If God existed, I’d be the first to know.”) Our sense of the past and our sense of encroaching death are aberrations unshared by the more perfect “lower” animals. On some level everyone concurs — pedants, poets, politicians, and priests. The days of wine and rose are not long, but neither are they short; they simply aren’t. Hardly a new notion, but with me the meaninglessness [of life] was clear from the start….
I disagree with some of the details of what Rorem says, but not the underlying substance. Life is meaningless, and that is probably why I am a Red Sox fan. Baseball season has begun once again, and Johnny Damon has been traded to the New York Yankees; seeing Damon cleanshaven and with short hair is just unnecessary, an additional bit of evidence that life has no meaning.
When I head back in to fold my now-dry clothes, the ballgame is on. Curt Schilling is pitching, holding off an attack by the Seattle Mariners in the fifth. He’s got quite a gut, Schilling does; baseball is the sport of all different body types. A split-finger fastball makes the last out: another reason that I know this is an imperfect meaningless world is that I have yet to be able to see the difference between the pitches when I’m watching a game. Except once when I was given tickets to an April ballgame in Fenway Park and Tim Wakefield was pitching; believe me, I could see that he was pitching knuckleballs. It rained that April ballgame of years ago, just as it’s raining tonight.
Back in the car, I find the game on WSAR out of Fall River. “Are those ambience microphones waterproof? They’ve got waterproof covers? I see. Schilling’s back on the mound…” I can follow the game better on the radio, I can imagine that I’m in Fenway Park. Fenway, where hopes springs eternal in April, only to fade in September or maybe mid-October; except, impossibly, in October of 2004.
The rain is steady, it really hasn’t increased in density…. but it’s still coming down, the pitch, a swing and a miss! The Red Sox waste another double. After eight, two-to-one Boston….
But Schilling went eight innings with only three hits. Just one more inning to go…two quick outs…a base hit by Ichiro Suzuki…and then….
…and the throw is to first, and this one is over…. Jonathan Papelbon gets the save! A two-to-one victory for the Sox!
Hey, maybe there is hope, maybe life does have meaning after all.
Out to Pope’s Island on Sunday for a walk. I saw very few ducks and waterfowl on the harbor. Two months ago, I could stand on Pope’s Island and see hundreds of ducks, loons, and geese; Sunday I saw just two pairs of Bufflehead and one pair of Common Goldeneye; all the rest have left for the season, heading north to wherever they breed.
We always talk about what we gain in spring — flowers, green leaves, warmth — but spring means the end of things too. It’s a poignant moment for me when the trees fully leaf out, and suddenly you can no longer see things you saw all winter. Every year when this happens I can’t help thinking to myself, I can’t wait until the leaves fall off the trees again so I can regain that sense of wide open space.
But spring has been on hold for the past couple of weeks. It’s gotten cool again, with the light snow last Wednesday, and temperatures below freezing the last few nights. The flowers that began to bloom in those warm days two weeks ago are still in bloom; the banks of forsythia bushes along Route 18 are still just barely washed with a haze of a few yellow flowers. I love these cold nights and cool days when spring pauses in its rush towards summer.
On Sunday it was sunny and warm, flowers were starting to bloom, the birds were singing. Yesterday the high thin clouds move in, and a south east wind blew damp and chilly across the harbor; stopped any more flower buds from opening. It rained all night, and this morning dawned gray and wet and dismal; the only birds that were out were the seagulls. By this afternoon the sun had come out, and it was cold with a brisk breeze out of the west; felt like winter again.
We’re supposed to get snow tonight, rain tomorrow, and it’s supposed to be warm and sunny again on Thursday. It’s turning into a typical New England spring week: bouncing back and forth between wintry weather and warm weather. After the warm sun over the weekend, I felt drained of energy by the sudden change to overcast skies and rain this morning — all morning in the office, we were talking about how we all felt slow and stupid. Then the cold wind this afternoon dampened my energy further, brought me to a low unthinking state of being: I just wanted to take a nap.
Yet tonight a church committee meeting turned from routine business discussions into a long conversation about reincarnation, God, what happens after death; we all wound up talking about people close to us who had died, and what their deaths had meant to us. It was an amazing conversation, a richly religious conversation. The uncertainties and vagaries of the weather seem to have opened up this conversation for us: and why not? We respond to the world around us in ways we pretend not to notice. But truth has a way of bursting in unexpectedly, like spring weather in this part of New England.
Along a sheltered street in Cambridge, the daffodils were in full bloom this morning, and the forsythia were out. I drove back down to New Bedford through intermittent rain, and at last I could smell spring. It has been so dry for the past month, the ground powder-dry, it hasn’t smelled like anything at all. Now we just hope for more April showers.
We’re staying in a Cambridge apartment today, and signs of spring are everywhere: purple and yellow croci blooming down the street, forsythia about to bloom, a sprig of pussy willow with big fat gray catkins that someone place in a vase in the entryway to this floor.
Astute reader Craig pointed out a recent article in the Kane County Chronicle: the owls are back nesting in a larch tree outside the old courthouse in Geneva, Illinois. [Link] Last year, I was living in Geneva and wrote about the owls as a sign of spring [Link]. Good to know that spring is indeed coming in Geneva as well as here in Massachusetts.
Drove down to the New Bedford end of the hurricane barrier, parked the car, and walked out. Low gray clouds, a stiff northerly breeze, a spattering of rain now and again. It was cold enough that I put my hood up and kept my gloves on; not a day to believe that spring is coming.
On my way back from the far end of the hurricane barrier, I stopped to look at a Common Loon in the water below me. It was quite close, close enough to see individual feathers through the binoculars. The loon was in the process of molting: the checkerboard pattern already clear on its back, the head becoming all black again as the white winter feathers on the throat came out. Soon the molt will be complete, and with its new set of feathers the loon will start to fly north, away from its wintering ground here in New Bedford harbor, to raise young loons on some lonesome lake in Canada. I could see, at least in imagination, the whole progress of spring written in the patchy feathers on its head.