spring effort

I was attentive to the tentative bristles of green and now all at once the leaves are too many to count; too thick and loud and gagging on the torrent of chlorophyll for me to be careful and observant.

I sat so long in emptiness and anticipation, whispering to the sap deep in the circling wood-folds and listening hard the way a child listens for the answer of a prayer to god: the child presented with a deity doesn't know not to expect magic.

(I may have been, tritely, ruined by religion and fiction in this way: awaiting what I believed to be a sure and inevitable climactic fork wherein the "ordinary" life I was living would be pulled away as a curtain. I would be presented with a vital challenge or quest that involved being somehow chosen or special and not just a respectable citizen who finishes school and gets a productive job. You know where this is going, it is the plot of most fantasy young adult books.

[Contrarily, the twentieth century brought about a great literary love of the salaryman/failure, with whom I also identify strongly.]

[I am now feeling the urge to watch and be inspired by some Kurosawa for some reason {Ikiru}.]

BUT there is magic, intoxicating. This invites fear. Retrospectively, the most magical times of my life were experienced just as any other present, and to think that hindsight is the only place where the larger waves of contentment can be recognized and plotted makes me afraid. Especially of getting old. Especially of not experiencing enough. Especially of being too overcome by my own small rabbit anxieties and existing in this state of visceral discomfort, masking the palpable peace that is within my reach, for no reason I can articulate. Especially of becoming boring.

[A thing I'm trying to say: There is so much joy now I am afraid I will not be able to gather it all up and hold it well enough before future-me is looking wistfully backwards.])

Now I touch the leaves with urgency in passing on my way to work; on my way home; on my way here and there. At work my tattoo lies under my sleeve and pulses in secrecy. My shiny gray new office and car make me feel so uncomfortably posh, sitting always on leather. Today I bought a small abalone shell, like an iridescent ear, to house my paperclips; it makes me think of the sea and love. After work I shed my sleeves. I pause on my bicycle to nuzzle the waxy magnolia petals.