Spring Me

So many Richmond springs behind me, and I’ve probably yet to appreciate one.  They haven’t been the springs I wanted–a full three months of moderate weather–but a week or two of neither heat nor chill before the heat takes over. My  anticipation of an ideal spring causes me to miss the one we get, and the one we get seems to be in a great hurry to be done with this year. The succession of blooms is so compressed as to  give the impression of all the flowers blooming at once. Nature knows, and what it seems to have figured out is that we’re in for a very dry summer. For other reasons besides anticipation of an ideal, I have missed the last few springs.  The distraction is not wholly removed, but I see with less cloudy eyes now, though enjoyment of what I see is still a challenge.  I am still preoccupied with making a better life for myself, finding a place, building a space that is mine. I woke early this morning (the clock said 3:51) to a bird singing in the echo chamber between the two long apartment buildings.  The song had no rhythm and little repetition.  It seemed more like speech than song.  I then began to think of giving up writing altogether simply to find more time to myself, as I can’t  work shorter days or shorten my commute.  But that would be to surrender to all I’m trying to escape.  The wall is thick, and I have only a spoon.  Five hours later I could still, just, hear that bird over the traffic. 

It’s evaluation time at work again, when we have to put in writing what we accomplished last year and what we hope to accomplish this year.  This year, as last year, my stated goal is to “move to the Tuckahoe library and work in my own community.”  Writing–my spoon–might never dig me out of this prison, but maybe I can spend the rest of my days in a more relaxed facility.  My legs and body are overweary of the commute, and I want back those eight hours lost to it each week.  Well-meaning people who are the second incomes in their households or earn six figures wonder why I don’t get a car, while I only wonder why Richmond and Henrico can’t get together on a fucking bus system.  My employer doesn’t owe me a transfer or any kind of accommodation to my well-being, but neither do I owe them my health and sanity.  Loyalty is not a commodity–no salary can buy it.  It’s to the community that I owe my work, and my employer can’t say that I shirk that responsibility.  Neither can they say I wouldn’t do an even better job in a community of my neighbors.

Another hour later, and the bird is silent, or just can’t be heard.  Another Richmond spring, another day of work.  Rush through an unnoticed landscape to seal yourself off from it.  Appreciate it on your own time.  When you get it.