April

The month of April typically conjures two things in my mind. First, and foremost (said the trickster), is April Fool’s Day. Second, is the trite phrase pounded in to my elementary-school consciousness: “April showers bring May flowers.”

While bewaring sudden manifestations of pilgrim boats, it is indeed a rainy April day, gray, wet, and gorgeous. It’s supposed to keep raining for the next 36 hours or so. Don’t get me wrong, at this stage I prefer it to snow. Spring is here, and although there are the skeletal remnants of snow — which unlike bleached bones get dirtier as they decay — the air is warmer, and the lingering snowbanks know their time is running out.

But when the last drop of water melts and is reabsorbed into the mother, new stirrings are evident. Sprouts of green poke up and demand to be seen by attentive souls. New beginnings, another pass on the spiral of birth, growth, death, and rebirth, leave their energy imprints all around them; they touch everything that looks upon them, leaving a sweet taste of possibility and hope upon the palate.

Today, I feel life rejuvenated.

And all these stirrings land in my lap on April Fool’s Day. Could it be one giant cosmic joke? Could the ineffable trickster be toying with me? Possibly. I’ve never quite discounted the notion of the Cartesian “evil genius” whose sole purpose is to mess with our reality, obscuring the division between reality and fantasy. But the evidence for this is less and less, as the Brezsnian notion of pronoia — the irrational belief that all of creation is conspiring to shower you with blessings — seems more and more real to me as time goes on.

Spring is here. Blessings are real. Just sayin.’

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