Spring

April already, and over a year since I've posted. It's not for want of something to say, but rather for the need to work through some stuff on my own. I have been traveling the kind of path that takes all of one's attention, the kind where the dangers are subtle but sincere. I'm not done, not sure the day will come when I announce, "I've made my way through!" -- but there has been progress.

Phoenix is a hard place to land: a friend's comment reminded me that I was excited to be here when we first arrived, and I had to dig deep to recall that feeling. I'm trying. And no, it's not the heat. It's just a foreign land in ways that I didn't expect, ways that keep it from feeling anything like home. So I wonder what that means, where home is, where it went, why I feel it behind me always but never in the here and now.

My little black-chinned hummingbird friend here is a welcome sight in the mornings. I'm tempted to draw some analogies about his need for fuel, the energy he must burn while hovering at the spout, the way his life is so tautly woven of two inseparable strands - he eats to live and lives to eat - and how my own efforts seem to chase their tails in much the same way. Instead, let's just look at the beauty of the creature. Winter is over. It's spring, when newness comes in waves, when winter is suddenly done (done!)... and when I can begin to hope that maybe that day will come for me after all.