Spring Breaking

Spring break is different from summer break, if only because the air rushes and moves, instead of pressing down on my lungs like the most oppressive hug ever. There was crazy, terrifying wind a few days ago, and I loved it: it was like the Santa Ana winds, but cold. (The Santa Ana winds are one of those weird California things that I miss like crazy--they're a tornado, flattened out and baked warm and skimming over the mountain- and tree-tops, roaring like the ocean's breath. If I flipped a coin on things I miss, it would land on edge between the Santa Anas and the lizards that do push-ups on sun-warmed cement. Oh, and In-N-Out.) The air between 40-50F degrees is nice when it's not raining--though I don't mind the rain--because it's crisp.

Spring in Indiana isn't all blooming and birds singing. Spring in Indiana is winter chipped back with a hacksaw and an icepick.

Town is just as empty, and just as quiet, as summer. There are more people around, but quieter. Somewhere in my apartment block, somebody practices drumming politely, using pencils rather than drumsticks against the edge of their countertop, loosing trills in the evening like a little gnomish marching band. Soon after sunset, I hear somebody on the floor above, singing prayers.

I made arrozcaldo the other night. It's rice stew, thick and simple and warming. I made it with chicken, with ginger and lime, with patis and toyo, with garlic and onion and red chili paste spicy enough to sting my eyes.

Four days I was immersed within Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear. Long books, dense books. Books joyful and filled with rhetoricky things, filled with desire for understanding and other things besides. Sometimes when I read, I can feel the universe unraveling and re-weaving around me, and I come out of the reading changed.

Spring book thrall is different from summer book thrall, because there's anxiety that lies underneath it. This is a brief idyll, and the "serious" reading still awaits. It's weird, sometimes, to think of "fun" versus "serious" reading, because sometimes "fun" reading is as serious as it gets.