April with his showers sweet

I'm not worried about the future. I'm worried about the past -- where will it go when I'm feeding the worms, this little history of mine?

Some spring days you smell the wet soil, watch the woodland creatures get cocky, and allow yourself to feel tantalizingly free. Take a few deep breaths. Put all the aches and pains of winter -- even a winter as mild as this one has been -- behind you. Ah! it makes you think that maybe you could chuck it all -- this deadening routine, this roundelay of biological necessity, this living to work rather than the other way around.

Why do we chase the golden hind as she disappears into the dark wood and get lost in there, again and again? Who says we're doomed to repetition? Let the hind get away.

It begins to rain. April showers and all that. You're just free enough to wander through the multi-tiered past, parts of it real and parts of it invented, and try to figure out which is which. Nobody knows, not even you, especially when it comes to your own past, let alone that of others. Hell, half of it's already made up. Bunk.

It's complicated being a free spirit, easier to adhere to routine. Who the hell wants to think about living? Better to put your books away and go out and do something. The yard needs work and the house needs cleaning. The roses need pruning and the gutters need repair. J. is coming to reset the stone wall surrounding the patio next week and put in new steps leading up to the lawn. I've got to move the woodpile, uncover the furniture, and clear the debris out of the raised beds. It'll be time to refinish the deck soon. But it's too wet to stay outside. I go back in the house and shovel more pellets into the wood stove. The heat feels good.

Okay, I'm reading a book about Cassirer and the name Bergson appears in it and I'm reminded of a book I read years ago by Merleau-Ponty called In Praise of Philosophy in which appeared an essay about Bergson which I have forgotten in its totality except for having gotten the feeling that I recognized something I had been waiting for some big-brained philosophe to admit: the stubborn irreducibility of the concrete world. Shite exists. Bang. We run into it all the time. I've layered on a lot of learning since then, but most of the rest of it's blown away like effin straw.

My friend M. says, "What it is, what it is." T. stares at the far horizon and remarks, "Trying to make it real compared to what." L. clambers up the tree of knowledge and says, "Not for nothing, but I told you so." Then there's a knock on the door. It's the Fed Ex guy with an envelope from the insurance company. All it takes is a little jerk on my chain to realize how effin unfree I really am.