We celebrate the first day of spring today; a time of rebirth and growth. Soon it will be time for me to plant my gardens and select the flowers that I’ll place around my home, and I’ll tend to them, care for them, and watch them grow. I find the most joy in this life from the simple things; a blossom which opens to the morning sun, and then closes in the cool night as the soft petals bathe in the dew of a sleeping world. Flowers, like life are transient things. We do not exist in one state of being in perpetuity; we must eventually evolve and change into something else. Tho accepting change and our lack of permanence are often rife with difficulty and pain. Change can be and often is painful, because we’re moving from a place of what is known and comfortable to a place of uncertainty and doubt, and fear of the unknown can be a powerful deterrent to accepting or even attempting change, but the real truth if there are any real truths left, is that we are powerless to resist change, even as we desperately cling to the past.

Can a child stop herself from being born. Can the sun stop himself from rising. Can the moon stop herself from looking down onto the world and gazing at her own reflection in the seas. They cannot, nor can we stop the seasons from turning, nor can we ever resist the changes the universe brings to us. It is our cycle of life. Everything lives for but an instant, and everything dies in such similar moments. Time gives us the illusion of life, but time is as tangible as our dreams. It can be measured and felt, we can see the effects of time, but we can never see the onward march of time’s sorrow.

I’ve often struggled with this paradox of change and time. We teach ourselves to let go of things, to surrender the bonds of possession, tho our human nature often stands sharply in the way. We want to believe and we want to cling and we want to love and to keep love and to save it, and protect it, but love like anything else can also change. The illusion may make it seem longer or even subtler, harder to measure, but learning to let go of the things I’ve loved has been the greatest burden of all.

I have loved many; sometimes too much if such a thing is possible. I opened myself and gave myself freely and without question, and perhaps where I fell was in expecting that my love would be returned, and for a while it was, but it is the memory of that love which sustains me and now allows me to let it go, forever.

Spring for me is a time of cleansing. The death and quiet still of winter passes us by, and we rejoice in the celebration of life; and we remember those which we have loved, as we kiss them goodbye and turn away towards tomorrow. I am a bit melancholy today, for a number of reasons, but one especially weighs heavy on my mind. I wrote once; “they come into our lives for a reason, and even tho we may never know the reason, they are there to teach us something as we claw and fight our way thru this life, this meager existence, as we prepare ourselves for what’s next.” I am ready to take that step.

I wandered around cyberspace for a while last night, looking for those undiscovered treasures, those priceless moments of serendipity when we discover something that we immediately connect with and allow ourselves to see beyond the words and perhaps catch a small glimpse of the person, the human being, behind those words. I’d like to share it now. It’s a small passage, a confession, written by Leonore S., about writing.

Everyone knows that I am a writer, everyone knows I write like I breathe, bleed–it is an excretion of mine. I was talking to someone last week, and he says to me that I should try to get published. I gave him such a look that he negated what he said to me. His was a kind of tough love gesture that everyone gives me because I write, but what do I do with it? I keep saying that I am–so it makes me–a writer. What have I got to show for it? What keeps me back from writing more? Is it fear, is it a lack of time? What has it been?

My entire body is warm from this confession. I never let anyone see the side of me that just goes cold at doing the thing that I love the most. I could not live if I was not a writer. It is how I process everything–thinking how to put it into words. This is the first time that I have put into words that I am not sure why I am not writing more and harder. I know other people beat themselves up about these things, but it really hurts to go inside and not know why there are so many blank screens and pages behind me.

What spoke to me was the thought of comparing writing to breathing, bleeding, excreting. That such passion, torment, and beauty within us is so powerful that it becomes a living entity, that the act of writing, of transforming the joy, the pain, the love, the ecstasy, the beauty, the sorrow, the angst which resides in each of us into words is something which becomes part of who we are. It becomes part of every fiber of our being.

Some people write to make a living. Some people write as a means to an end. Some people treat writing as if it were no different than prostituting yourself on a street corner. And there are some, very few really, who write because they have no other choice. They write because they have to, because it is more than just what they do, it’s who they are. And to stop writing would be like asking them to stop breathing; to stop would mean to die; and as the sun must rise, and the moon must gaze and the seasons must change, and as we all draw another breath, so must those for who this is both a blessing and a curse, write. We write.

Happy Spring.