What Hope Looks Like From Here

It's the first day of Spring and although I enjoyed this winter quite a bit, I'm not sorry to see it go. Longer days, hints of green poking up through brown leftover ick and "come hither" bird songs make it seem like just one more day and it'll really happen. Spring will be sprung: lilacs will bloom heavy and fragrant, their branches will bend down toward the ground when rains come and soak the delicate petals. Daffodils will nod cheerfully on hillsides that just yesterday seemed covered forever in snow, ice, sand and salt. My eyes will be astonished that they forgot, once again, what green really looks like. This is what hope looks like in New England at the end of March:


This glacier is mostly fallout from the upstairs roof. It's a deep, solid, impenetrable fortress of winter. I'm going to mark down the date it's finally all melted. Anyone wanna put in a bet?

Looks like it's time to open the backyard compost dump pile for business! Hooray!

Now there's some serious hope.


Pussy Willows


Lilacs. It'll still be another, oh....month and a half until these buds do their beautiful thing.


But first, we must be patient through the fifth and most unwelcome season:




Unfortunately, the town "fixed" this road since I was on it yesterday so my picture doesn't do full justice to how bad it was. Yesterday it was like something college girls would use for a mud wrestling match in a bad Revenge of the Nerds kind of movie. The mud and ruts were so deep and sloppy that it was nearly impassable. I guess a milk truck got stuck a little further down the road earlier this week.

I know that most of you who bother to look at my blog live in New England or at least the Northeast. You're probably nodding your heads and agreeing with me that this is, indeed, what hope looks like on the first day of Spring in New England. I'm not sure someone from away would see it the same.

Feeling hopeful is grand.

Another Bad Ass Home Despair Project. I Mean Repair Project

Since I don't have babies and new parenting skills to brag and blog about, I offer instead another glimpse into my home repair exploits. Mom & Dad, I hope this warms your hearts and makes you proud:

The Illusions By Which We Live

How much of our lives depend upon illusions? And who is perpetuating those illusions: You alone, someone else to keep you happy, an entire group to which you belong?

How much of our lives are meaningful because of certain fictions? Fictions of: self- importance, friendship, sympathy, compassion?

How can you know if any particular thing about who you are is true, real, not an illusion, not a fiction you've created? I'm not sure you can. And if you can't know that beyond a doubt for yourself, how can you hope to know anything true about anyone else?

All I can be pretty certain of is that we were all born and that we'll all die, we all have bodies that involve biological function. Those things don't seem like illusions, at least, not without adding lots of mystical, magical thinking. Everything else you might want to put into the category of "true" and "real" seems ripe for scrutiny.

The illusions keep us getting up each day and continuing on. It's in creating fictions of who we are and what we're about, that we find meaning. Some days I find this perpetual task invigorating and full of beauty. Today I find it isolating and exhausting. I'm sure Sisyphus had his off days too.