Just another Sunday

I'm still getting used to the keyboard and keys on the new laptop, but I have written more in the past 24 hours than I have in months. This is just what I needed to kick off my creativity. After all, writing doesn't have to mean sitting in an office chair for hours until my butt is numb and feels like it's made of lead or my legs are so swollen from pressure edema that they look like balloons and my feet like they belong to a cartoon character. I can sit comfortably on the couch or chaise or even be comfortably naked in bed with the laptop on a pillow or between my legs on top of the covers and write to my heart's content, pouring out all the thoughts I struggled to write longhand with pens that skip and fail to work consistently until my hands cramp. I have to work 8-14 hours a day transcribing and some days it is more than I can face to sit another 2, 3 or more hours to write out what is in the fertile soil of my brain. I feel like I have been given a reprieve and I'm running out the door before they figure out it was all a mistake.

Can I just say ... I LOVE MY NEW LAPTOP!

I am willing, nay eager, to get used to the keyboard and the function keys, and I can do without the numeric keypad. I am content.

While I was on the phone to Qwest to learn how to turn on the wireless function on my DSL modem and waiting for Steve to find the password to open the administration website, my eyes focused and I noticed lilacs blooming across the street. Lilacs. Beautiful lilac-colored lilacs blooming. Delicate pale blue violet clusters of star-shaped flowers budding and bursting open in ripe profusion. Lilacs. I hadn't noticed them before, but I have been otherwise engaged in mourning the death and dismemberment of the pink blossoms on the tree next door and the flagging sunshine gold of the forsythia.

The yard across the street is sere brown and rises in tan puffs when the pack of children attending the day car there romp and scamper across the yard. Grass no longer grows there and it seems the mother and daughter who own the house have decided not to bow to the suburban convention of perfect emerald squares of lawn treated to within an inch of its growth with chemical soups and stews that leach into the water table and poison the earthworms and bacteria that comprise an important part of the cycle of life and decay. There is no homeowners association in our neighborhood and, from talking to the Evanses ,who are sporadically moving from their suburban hell to our corner of Old Colorado City still caught blissfully in the 1950s, no Nazi Stormtrooper guardians of cloned mediocrity who need to spend their time monitoring their neighbors' hive conscious display of perfectly stationed and retrieved trash cans, parking skills and independent thinking. We here on the west side live oblivious to our neighbors' householding skills, focused instead on really getting to know them. Here the gossips are more concerned with what you do than what appearance you maintain.

Even though most of the neighbors disliked the tree-hating orc wench's pretensions to suburban thinking and her aggressive displays and complaints against the suburbanites who trekked here every Saturday morning during the Farmer's Market, intent on keeping them from parking anywhere around or near her possessive and clearly marked NO PARKING zones (despite the fact that she was marking territory already claimed by the city and thus public), they knew more about her private life than probably was good for anyone. The tree-hating orc wench never let anyone outside of her family (and eventually perspective owners when she and her husband were posted to Pueblo) inside the house. Even her "best friend" and partner in crimes against Farmer's Market visitors was never allowed inside the house. The windows were covered with heavy drapes and contact paper that kept out prying eyes and sunlight. No one found out the why and wherefore until Mike and Michelle, the young married couple who bought the house, moved in and began building friendship ties with the neighbors, dropping a pebble in a pond and letting the story spread in ever widening ripples that although the tree-hating orc wench tended lovingly to the yard and flowers and bushes, in comparison, the inside of the house was the black hole of Calcutta. Garbage stuffed into closets and corners, walls, ceilings, woodword and windows black with filth, grease and cigarette smoke and festooned in cobwebs more like what to inspect inside a crack house or abandoned derelict than in the house of someone who looked cleaned and neat, but who seldom ventured out in the light of day.

Into this world where spring is slow to ripen and winter reluctant to loose its icy grip, comes those delicately blossoming lilacs like a declaration that spring is here to stay no matter how the winter howls and spits its ice at us. Beneath that perfect blue sky and among the clattering bare twiggy branches lilacs have come back from their long sleep and burst forth with quiet triumph. Lilacs.

And where there is one bush there will be others, a sure sign on this cold morning that time moves on and even the seasons must give up and give way. We are speeding through time and it is a sight like blossoming fragrant lilacs that remind me there is so much to do that should not wait. There is no perfect time to do what needs to be done. There is only now. This moment. This breath. This second. Then it is gone to be replaced by another moment, another breath, another second that will be lost and mourned unless taken and enjoyed.