Dispatch from the Front Range: 3.28.21

So where do we go from here? After this year [these years], after the winter that has occupied us for months, where do we go and what do we look towards to help us find the way?

I’m looking towards spring. Moreover, I’m looking for spring.

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I’m looking for spring and its symbols to indicate how I’m supposed to move forward in this world. To model for me a posture that can exist amorphously, yet consistent enough to be unphased by the storms and scorches. I’m looking for signs of spring as a reminder that yes indeed everything is turning over, folding into itself, and bursting forth again and again and again and again. I’m looking for signs of spring to guide me as I am on my own brink of becoming.

Spring is earthly queer beyond the binary of winter and summer; it is always here and it is often almost. Spring dwells deep in glacial heels, whispering trickling trickling trickling then gracefully falling into the mud that we all mark spring by. And on those long hot July days spring is also there lying deep in the soil of the prairie feeding the roots of the grasses like a mother to a suckling child. Spring is ephemeral– as people often say– but more than fleeting, spring is fluid. Dripping down the cracks, bursting through the sidewalk seams, floating in the breeze. Spring is hazy in its both/and. It is not the wind, but it becomes known by the wind. It is not the flower but makes it shape in vulvar blooms.

Yet, I am still determined to know it. To know spring means I must observe– with my eyes, ears, and heart. Currently, my days are spent among children. Particularly among a 4 year old who bubbles with simplistic wisdom. She asks me, “but when IS spring?! Cause it felt like it yesterday, but today it is snowing. Will you please let me know when it’s actually spring.” I told her I’ll try my best, but that together we can look for it and take notes. We seek with our senses: how do we sense spring in the air? What can the grass tell our feet about spring? What songs do we hear with our ears? What can we notice with our eyes and nose? What stirs in our hearts alerting us life is abundant?

Our field notes look like patches of green grass, running water from melted snow, bird songs harmonizing among bird songs, bunnies playing through rabbit rush, light lingering a little bit longer than the day before, warm sun on our limbs, the desire to play and sing and be one with the breeze. She asks, “how do you spell green grass?” I respond in sounds “guh-guh-guh... rrrr-rrr-rrr....eee-eee-ee, and then another eee...enn-enn.” she is brilliant and forms shapes out of my sounds. Wobbly letters resembling the word green then slowly grass emerges and she draws pictures of the life she finds around us.

Maybe this is more spring than spring itself? The slowness and gentleness required to be present in this transient state. Making shapes out of feelings and putting those together to make meaning.