Happy first day of Spring! I can’t wait to wear a sundress and have to shave my legs.
My collective unconscious told me it was here. Last night, I dreamt of brooms (like in Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and plastic shoe organizers. Spring is about awakening space: personal, professional, residential, outdoor. Give me that first 65 degree day and a city-funded tulip bed and hey, I’m at a Dave Matthews concert! I’m twirling in cotton! You never catch people twirling in the winter–and not just because it’s slippery. Cold is clausterphobic.
I work in the office. No, not AN office, but THE office.
My boss, despite his best intentions, commits daily inappropriatisms. There appears to be some coorelation between warm weather and shady behavior. Today, he took a call in an Indian accent (he’s not Indian). Last Wednesday, in the heat blip before the ice storm, he waxed philosophical on male teachers at girls schools as “pedaphilic creeps” while I was conducting an interview with a male teacher. And he informed the new secretarial hire, who lasted all of three days, that her hair looked cuter on her Passport. (In his defense, it did.)
Spring: the natural world expands, personal boundaries break down. The whole city goes into heat. Mama birds push their babies out of the nest. Is this a problem? Are there lines of pollen we shouldn’t cross? So what if my boss hangs old leg X-rays on the windows to show us his bone shards? The sun shines through them quite beautifully. I’m rather fond of his pain glass window.
Hey, I think Spring was responsible for Steve Gutenberg inviting me over to his table at Sushi Samba. In a slightly unhinged way, he ushered the ushers into sacred celebrity space. We talked drunkenly about writing and made vague promises to hang-out again. It was like being at a frat party, only with fancier drinks. And if my blog were a season, it would have to be Spring. Nothing says deconstructed personal boundary like timing a celebrity on the toilet. Steve Gutenberg went twice. 49 seconds before the show, 1:13 during intermission.
In the next few days, take a minute to breathe in the air. It’s charged, it’s changing. You can smell the season calibrating. Be grateful that in March, physical space unfurls, that you have plenty of it. Be grateful you aren’t on a transatlantic British Airways flight seated next to a dead body. Apparently, when passengers expire on a BA flight, they get transferred to first class. Unannounced. Come on! I was a travel agent for four years and even I found it impossible to upgrade. If you’re dead and can’t enjoy the Playstation or the salmon, shouldn’t the attendants store you in steerage and bump up someone else? Paul Trinder awoke on his Delhi to Heathrow flight to find the corpse of a 70 year old woman propped up beside him. (Coincidentally, this was the same route that compelled Ralph Fiennes to seduce a stewardness.) She was carried to his row for “more space,” and the woman’s daughter came along too, “waling in grief.” Here’s what Paul had to say about it:
“She kept slipping under the seatbelt and moving about with the motion of the plane. When I asked what was going on I was shocked to hear she was dead…It was terrifying. I put my earplugs in but couldn’t get away from the fact that there was a woman wailing at the top of her voice just yards away. It was a really intense, primal sound.”
Click here to read the full article.
If Spring is about having more space it’s also about cleaning it. Remember my boss who answers the phone like a passenger on a transatlantic flight from Delhi? Well, he loves to share stories of conspiracy and consumerism. We hear all about the steel beam framework of the World Trade Center and the rats at Taco Bell. Today’s apocalyptic news was the rise in bed bugs at high-end hotels. I had just clicked “Confirm” on my Chicago Expedia accomodations for a week long recruiting trip. I can feel my back itching already. I googled the bed bug story so I could better figure out how to spot and kill them. The first thing you should do is inspect the mattress and its seams. Also, picture frames. Bed bugs are visible and according to this article like to shack up on wall art.
The good news is their damage is “more emotional than physical.”
