It's Spring and it's raining.

Yesterday was supposed to have been 60's degrees. I wouldn't know; I spent rhe day indoors with the blinds drawn. I could've opened up the vertical blinds by the sliding glass door; the door faces (roughly) east/south-east and when open I get almost a full day's light through it. But yesterday I didn't feel like it, and even though it's grey and drizzling outside, I've decided to compensate for yesterday by opening the blinds and letting the diffused sunshine come on it.

So welcome to spring. You might call, I have a thing for equinoxes and solstices. And some day I shall campaign for the New Year to begin Dec 21/22/23 because, really, that makes so much more sense; but for now I am content to observe the occasion privately.

Ceremony is a strange thing; I'm actually very fond of ritual, as long as it's personal. It's the institutionalized rituals I have a problem with--somtimes accepting, sometimes easy, sometimes outright hostile. (What can I say? I'm 30 years old and still a rebel without a clue.) But I try to keep my own holidays. May 22; November 5 . . . for a while, in college, I tried commemorating the anniversary of the rape/death of Kitty Genovese but such self-righteous indignation was best left to Harlan Ellison and Alan Moore.

And then we have the equinoxes and solsitices. I prefer three of them, with the autuminal equinox something of a red-headed step-child. Well, that may be harsh. I respect the autuminal equinox, as it hearalds the last phase of the year. But I have little joy in it happening. The summer solstice is also bittersweet. It's the longest day of the year, but it's all downhill from there. Ah, but the winter equinox, that's the lowest point you can go (in a darkness/light dichotomy; from bad to worse. Unless you're a night owl. Or live in the southern hemisphere.)

The vernal equinox is probably my favorite because, theoretically, it's only going to get warmer. And it's been a dreary winter. March has been odd, what with all the minor snow storms we've had at the first half in the month. And being down here in Maple Shade, still trying to make a go of these, the winter has been a long one.

But Spring is here, and constant warm weather isn't too far away. It's already light out at 6:00 in the evening. Soon I'll be moth-balling the winter jacket and wearing my fabulously past-its-prime trenchcoat. The next First Friday in Philly is coming up, and it should be nice to be out with people. I'm running out of excuses to stay indoors.

I was remarking the other day that I am keenly aware of time and distance. I think that's half true. I'm aware of it, I understand it, but I'm not 100% sure I understand it correctly. Or, perhaps more to the point, I don't accept it's relation the way I should. Instinctively, I try to force time and distance to suit my needs, to do what I want it to do. Naturally, my success in this endeavor as been unsurprisingly minimal, but I've never met a windmill I wasn't willing to tilt. (It's the guy on the horse and the lance charging straight for me that illicits the instinctive tactical withdrawal.) I'd like to be able to make some semi-pompous generalization that "everything is a matter of time and distance" and while I think that's something that holds a fair amount of water, I think it's also over simplfying matters for all the wrong reasons. Time and distance is relative. What it is for me is not what it is for you, for your pet cat, etc.

Still, the matter remains: time and distance. The sun in the sky, the Earth in its orbit. For a moment, all things are equal. Balance is achieved. But the Earth keeps on spinning--the sun, too, and the galaxy, and the universe is expanding and you can insert your one-grain-of-sand-on-a-beach analogy here thank you very much. We are always moving, four dimensions-plus. We have our moments. Moments are all we ever get.