The Flip Side To Pain

This is absolutely stunning. The alarm was set for 7:15. I WOKE up at 6:00 and crawled out of bed. Tended to my toiletries, including an invigorating shave, freshened up the cats' water bowl, popped the Crestor and the baby Bayer, chowed a banana and scalded up a cup of coffee.

Stumbled up here, sat down at the desk and and marvelled at the sun blazing into my eyes.

The sun is at such an angle that it is fiercely shining directly into my face. I might describe it as annoying if my body and heart and soul did not need, did not crave, spring warmth and comfort so badly. I like the sun challenging my patience like this, letting me know that it is here and doing it's part.  Already, as I write and the earth moves, the light is less intense and moving higher.

I came up thinking about spring. It is struggling to assert itself. The sun is saying to me "Yeah I'm trying to make it happen. Don't blame me - you guys messed up your climate."

When your body and spring weather are out of sync, it is disorienting. It has been spring for a month now but only a few days have been graceful enough to treat us right. The rest have been like a dog dragging a blanket behind him through the mud. Spring is moving forward but winter soils the effort with cold.

I am amazed at how quickly the angle of the sun changes. It is already at the cross bar of the window and hence not directly in my eyes.

I have begun escaping work at lunch lately so I can breathe. I parked by the river on one of those graceful warm days, windows down, sandwich in hand. Sitting under a tree. A tree with ripe buds swollen with promise. Behind the curve though, in my mind, delayed, slowed down, hesitating, blooming late (as my mother used to say about me).

I am yearning for beauty next time I sit there. If I am lucky, nature will have moved along and burst forth with that beauty that can never be taken for granted. Not at this time of year.

In the summer you might find yourself slogging along in 92 degree heat, rivulets of sweat advertising through your clothes your displeasure with the situation, wavy heat lines in your peripheral vision giving solid expression to the heat, your head down, your pace slow.

Not me. I don't do that. When the heat grinds into my bones and boils the marrow, it is the only time my entire body experiences sweet release. I have to be warm from the inside out. Complete relaxation, perfect peace. My body tells me through sensation that this is the way life is meant to be lived. No tensing of the muscles against the cold. No physical tension at all. My body existing loosely, not coiled against anything.

But you might slog through a summer day with dead senses.

You cannot do that at this time of year. Nobody can. Warmth, when it comes, comes out of no where. And beauty assaults your senses. The color coming alive around you, birds singing while taunting us with their ability to fly, animals moving through the woods and through your yard, pursuing survival at a leisurely pace, the smell of delicate flowers and mowed lawns, the feel of the soil.

I am angry at spring. I need it now. The real thing, not the calender version. Of course my anger is meaningless. All of humanity is meaningless compared to nature.

I have a diseased time frame. I sit here thinking that spring is being wasted. Days are getting past me with no spring in them. I mourn them.

But with my guts twisted as they have been for a couple of months now, I have a new found ability to appreciate. Got home early from work yesterday, spent the evening and the night with my amazing wife. Barbecue (Delmonico steaks, baby), conversation, TV, the cats, responsible alcohol consumption.  It was a peaceful, content, soul nourishing night with the only human who holds the other key to me. (I stole that line from My Love by Paul McCartney. I heard it yesterday for the 76,889th time, but that line knocked me down for the first time).

The sun is 3/4 of the way up the window now. Only in my eyes if I look up. Which I just did. Just to get the feel, the power, the promise of the sun.

I have to work today. I despise working on Sundays. Despise it. But the Devil holds the contract, and the consequences of not honoring it are dire. Once I get there I justify the horror with visions of dollar signs and an appreciation of the slow pace. Today even that is impossible. There will be a presence there to break the spell and I am disgusted. Fighting against this obligation today with all that is alive within me.

But I am out early for a change. 2:30. That is workable. When I get home I will sink into the peace and love of my wife, the enjoyment of racing and THE SOX, the cats. Balm for my soul. I will appreciate what is left to me of this day.

The ultimate message here is that I am ready. When nature fights through the environmental havoc we have wreaked and spreads warmth through our bodies and into our hearts and into our souls; I am ready.

Ready with a much more nuanced, a much more pointed and appreciative ability to make the most of it.

This is the flip side to pain.