Do you know what I love?

Spring is here. More gorgeous by far than I ever remember. I picnicked today and walked outside and let my white oxford dry in the sun and was hit left-and-right by the smell of all sorts of blossoms. Soo beautiful.

And I whined so much. The two months between Valentine's day and tax day are hell for me: waiting, watching, whining, my hopes up and my hopes down and me furious and powerless the entire time. Then spring springs and I sit in awe. And May and June are always better and cooler and greener than I remember--spring lasts and lasts and gives way to lovely summer nights.

But for all my angst about spring coming, I love the autumn. I love that one day is warm and the next raining and then next warm again. And I was thinking about that today, about why the gradual unpredictable spring is such a more terrible transition than autumn's slow fading, and I think an answer is that I love endings of things. Spring is technically the end of winter of course, but it's a happy ending, it's an obvious beginning.

I love tragic drawn-out endings. I like kissing boys when I know I'm going to break up with them (sometimes this isn't as sinister as it seems. Sometimes it is) and the conversation you have when you trade your stuff back. I love saying goodbye to co-workers, last phone calls, last car rides, walking away knowing something's broken and it will never be the same... Everything takes on this heft of meaning when when you're doing it or saying it for the last time. Like that poem--have you heard of this?--that consists of the NY Times the morning of September 11, 2001. Even the weather (winds from the east?) seems heavy with intention.

And it's not that it's not hard. I cry and look back with regret and dwell on might-have-beens. It's just that it's the kind of hard I can handle. A friend of mine (speaking of tragic endings) used to like to poke at her bruises, she liked the feeling; I feel like this is the same sort of thing: pain I seek out, pain that's comforting...I know how neurotic this sounds/is.

And so I'll spend May napping and hiking and deliriously happy. And waiting, really, for the fall.