Thursday, April 1, 2010

welcome spring. tell me you're not fooling.

i've never been excited by april fool's day. i mean, who really cares? not that tricking people into believing bold faced lies hasn't been a past practice of mine. in fact, when i was fourteen and gina what's-her-nose misunderstood something i said which led her to believe that i'd actually WRITTEN the lyrics scrolled on my trapper-keeper, i became drunk with the power of fooling my peers. it entertained me through the ridiculous time that was early high school. yes, love and rockets paid me $50 for every song i wrote for them. no, i actually hadn't spent last summer commuting to UC Berkeley and taking part in the nerd program--i mean Gifted and Talented program. really i was on tour as a back-up singer for the cure. because my singing doesn't cause even my cat to run away. ask my sisters. actually, you probably already know.
yes, i was engaged to my exchange student and only studying spanish so that i could flee the country after my next tour. and did you know that my hair is actually naturally curly? i straighten it daily with a flat iron.

at first this was amusing. but soon i realized i could get anyone to believe anything i said. why not? it's human nature to believe. once i discovered this, the stories didn't seem so fun. add to the equation that i actually do occasionally have true and outlandish stories to tell, whose truth and impact became compromised by the false ones....and it was time to come clean.

so yeah, april fools. not my cup of tea.
but what DOES excite me about today is the abundant sunshine and a peek out the window at the pink magnolia trees and the yellow forsythia. it's like a freakin' easter egg over here! welcome spring. tell me you're not fooling.

because while you californians may not be impressed with this meager display of 'early' spring, the seasons mean more to me on the east coast than i ever could have understood while living west. i'm not even one to poo-poo the winter, however harsh it may be. and in my book, that's really harsh. but after the total barren look for however many months, when those blooms start to show their color in this grey winter scape, it makes you want to scream, SPRING! REBIRTH! RENEWAL! really, it's so dramatic and cliched. but it gets all the way down to your toes and you just want to go to the park and jumprope.

3 comments:

Amy said...

So happy to see you can share in some of the pretty blossoms we've had out here in CA .... for quite some time. Haha!!! :)

kim said...

That picture is cool because I remember the earlier one with the snow of the same view. And, yes, you can be trickster - especially since I am super gullible and you can seem so earnest.

Magpie said...

indeed, spring is a huge joy here in the east.