REALITY?: Fast Forward

Every now and then I’ll go up to a window. Winter is changing into Spring with the friendly rain, and I don’t want to miss it. Sometimes, you’ll wake up in the morning and the season has changed without you. And sometimes, even with the daylight you just won’t see it because you’re busy folding T-shirts or matching socks and wondering what to thaw for dinner and counting sugar in the peas and bread.

Even when you’ve been born and raised New England and buffeted by white wet winds and gone on to smell the day that Spring arrives, it never should be something you just get used to. Even in a lifetime blessed with years of maturation, the day is only eighty something out of close to thirty thousand so it’s rare enough to stop and watch it happen.

I’ve been lucky to see the Northern Lights three times, a couple full eclipses, the starshowers that fireworked the night skies for several hours two years ago, and the speck of planet visible to the naked eye that’s rarely seen. My senses scream in disbelieving protest at the purpled hot pink of an artist’s palette, yet I have seen a yellow sky in afternoon before a storm, and the silent crackling that you don’t need your ears to hear. I have run to take a picture of a peach and aqua sky in evening, although I’ve never bothered looking at the photo after that. A three by five image just doesn’t match the unlimited sky my eyes have clicked upon and stored in the artistic memories file cabinet of my mind. The smell of Spring before the buds have even thought to waken is as distinct as that of warm pavement in the rain.

The time lapse photography is happening this morning to the season, and the patches of lawn are growing by the hour. Sometimes, it’s important to be there.