Today was the first day that truly felt warm and spring-like and everywhere, the trees are sprouting bits of green. Last night was probably the first night that I was able to walk from the bus stop rather leisurely without hurrying to get inside as quickly as possible. I switched my winter coats out for warmer weather jackets over the weekend, so I suppose there is no going back. I am especially reveling in the season since it felt so much to have been stolen last year (technically I was just as able to appreciate it a year ago, but just wasn't in a place or mood to.) Plus being out in the world is very different from watching it pass from the inside for the most part The weight is lighter this year, though those numbers and their steady creep are worrisome some days. Still, I am holding on.
The current exhibit on my mind, I dreamed last night that we were going around in a circle and I had to tell my favorite urban legend, and like delineating my favorite anything, it was hard. Theree is, of course, Resurrection Mary--vanishing hitchhikers in general I suppose. But it's also hard to draw that line between urban folklore and ghost stories and sometimes they are one in the same. My conspiracy theories series, both the poems and the collages definitely nod to common urban legends, but also to the sort of folklore we build as individuals, particularly as children making sense of the world. We also have a fun urban legends based trivia night planned for the end of the month so I'll be digging for even more. .
The NAPOWRIMO poems are progressing, though I don't feel it's turning out to be about the things I intended it to be, theme wise, and maybe something wholly different. Which also may means this particular series may wind up in a different manuscript than I intended, not in automagic with it's victoriana themed work but in animal, vegetable monster), which actually works out better in the end. They seem to be much more about death and art and artist as god-figure than I anticipated.
Otherwise, I've been thinking about things to do once we are more in the covid-clear, or at least once I am--movies, museums, thrifting. It will be glorious. I didn't miss the other people out and about, but I did miss some of the things that, while not impossible, seemed not quite to be worth the risk. My mother's birthday also came round yesterday. Sometimes this makes me sad, but at the same time it also makes me angry at the missteps of doctors and the healthcare system that may have made a difference. Or maybe no difference at all and that also makes me angry. She would have been 74 this year, but I think more about her regularly at the age I am now. When she was on the verge of 47, it was 1994. I was in college living at home and my sister was in high school. The 90's in general kind of calm and plodding along, but with less detail than other periods. I have a hard time thinking about what our lives were like then. And maybe this is the case as you get older--things fuzz out and soften around the edges.
