"Spring comes to New York even when New York is a sad piece of shit, even after all the losses and even as the new ones accumulate." - what a great, true line.
And February was (apparently) my second time of getting Covid. (Maybe my second time, part B.) Glad you got over it.
"What right does the world have, after everything, even now, even this year, two years into a plague, to ask us to take our coats off and go outside and feel something."
The right of conquest. Triumph of life over death, same as Persephone returning to mom's house every spring to kill her uncle Dumuzi.
"It was poop-brown and lined with thick fake fur."
Got me a black leather trenchcoat and a pair of sunglasses with shiny round lenses and wore for years and years, because it was just great in the rain. The the Matrix came along and people said I had copied the matrix and I got annoyed because the matrix had copied me. PBBTTHHHH. So I stopped wearing it for a few years, especially after Columbine, and then the war came along and I had replaced the old black leather trenchcoat with a new black leather trenchcoat. It was a lovely dismal spring rain today, so I wore it driving around with the windows rolled down and the wipers running. Parfait.
"The vibes in New York are excrementally bad right now. The vibes in the world are bad in general and the vibes here are bad specifically."
I would like to know why the vibes are so bad in NYC, since I actually live around the people who are Jade Helming themselves into a freakout massacre about groomers, so I do not know how it could be that land in blue land.
"I realized that a majority of the couples I know had first gotten together in these few weeks at the beginning of spring, when everything glows green and stupid. "
My parents wedding anniversary was yesterday. I had to remind them. They forgot.
"But here we are in it again anyway, at the end of the month that sucks the most, in the heart of Fool’s Spring, in the miracle that makes himbos of us all, when everything blooms green."
Life is basically a stupid idea you know. A bunch of slime reproducing itself on a cold rock orbiting a chill fusion bomb in a universe which will eventually get bored about it all and dissolve into an eternity of void, or collapse in the ultimate fireball of self-destruction. Could hardly be any sillier.
I also got covid last week after two years of avoiding it and found myself thinking "I don't deserve this!" and then, "and I guess I also don't deserve any of the wonderful spring things happening outside that are gorgeous and pure and unadulterated by all the awful things in the world right now."
You say that so beautifully here. "No one deserves anything, and yet it comes for us all the same." Thank you for articulating exactly what spring in a city feels like in 2022.
Oops, I cried reading this even though I now live in the PNW and Spring is kinda different here but have otherwise spent my whole life living in Toronto which feels vaguely similar to New York in this specific way.
"It is bad in a way where it doesn’t feel like spring should be allowed: We can’t have this, we haven’t earned it. Come back when we’re ready for it, come back when we deserve it. I feel this way about myself, too. I don’t deserve to be dragged forward out of the cold and the dark into the next thing. I don’t deserve to see the flowers push up out of the dead ground. I don’t deserve the bright colors, the soft air, the lilacs out of the dead land."
> the deadened and hopeless and slashed-up feeling of living too far into the future. It feels that way now, in another century, in another set of circumstances, once again so much further into the future than any of us ever intended to get.
Dang, what a line (and a half). I for one didn't expect to make it past 2015 or so. We're so far into terra incognita, a bunch of Wile E Coyotes that never looked down. Everybody is just making it up as we go along.
"Spring comes to New York even when New York is a sad piece of shit, even after all the losses and even as the new ones accumulate." - what a great, true line.
And February was (apparently) my second time of getting Covid. (Maybe my second time, part B.) Glad you got over it.
"What right does the world have, after everything, even now, even this year, two years into a plague, to ask us to take our coats off and go outside and feel something."
The right of conquest. Triumph of life over death, same as Persephone returning to mom's house every spring to kill her uncle Dumuzi.
"It was poop-brown and lined with thick fake fur."
Got me a black leather trenchcoat and a pair of sunglasses with shiny round lenses and wore for years and years, because it was just great in the rain. The the Matrix came along and people said I had copied the matrix and I got annoyed because the matrix had copied me. PBBTTHHHH. So I stopped wearing it for a few years, especially after Columbine, and then the war came along and I had replaced the old black leather trenchcoat with a new black leather trenchcoat. It was a lovely dismal spring rain today, so I wore it driving around with the windows rolled down and the wipers running. Parfait.
"The vibes in New York are excrementally bad right now. The vibes in the world are bad in general and the vibes here are bad specifically."
I would like to know why the vibes are so bad in NYC, since I actually live around the people who are Jade Helming themselves into a freakout massacre about groomers, so I do not know how it could be that land in blue land.
"I realized that a majority of the couples I know had first gotten together in these few weeks at the beginning of spring, when everything glows green and stupid. "
My parents wedding anniversary was yesterday. I had to remind them. They forgot.
"But here we are in it again anyway, at the end of the month that sucks the most, in the heart of Fool’s Spring, in the miracle that makes himbos of us all, when everything blooms green."
Life is basically a stupid idea you know. A bunch of slime reproducing itself on a cold rock orbiting a chill fusion bomb in a universe which will eventually get bored about it all and dissolve into an eternity of void, or collapse in the ultimate fireball of self-destruction. Could hardly be any sillier.
elm
surf's up!
Lovely, as always. But also, THANK YOU for linking to the Magic Mike XXL article. What a revelation!
I also got covid last week after two years of avoiding it and found myself thinking "I don't deserve this!" and then, "and I guess I also don't deserve any of the wonderful spring things happening outside that are gorgeous and pure and unadulterated by all the awful things in the world right now."
You say that so beautifully here. "No one deserves anything, and yet it comes for us all the same." Thank you for articulating exactly what spring in a city feels like in 2022.
Oops, I cried reading this even though I now live in the PNW and Spring is kinda different here but have otherwise spent my whole life living in Toronto which feels vaguely similar to New York in this specific way.
"It is bad in a way where it doesn’t feel like spring should be allowed: We can’t have this, we haven’t earned it. Come back when we’re ready for it, come back when we deserve it. I feel this way about myself, too. I don’t deserve to be dragged forward out of the cold and the dark into the next thing. I don’t deserve to see the flowers push up out of the dead ground. I don’t deserve the bright colors, the soft air, the lilacs out of the dead land."
Pow, right in the kisser.
> the deadened and hopeless and slashed-up feeling of living too far into the future. It feels that way now, in another century, in another set of circumstances, once again so much further into the future than any of us ever intended to get.
Dang, what a line (and a half). I for one didn't expect to make it past 2015 or so. We're so far into terra incognita, a bunch of Wile E Coyotes that never looked down. Everybody is just making it up as we go along.