It is early spring, and I collect the pieces of the season, watching them accumulate. There are not enough pieces yet to make a full-fledged spring, but I know that they will come.
And so I lay them out in my mind, building a framework on which to place buds, catkins, early flowers, birdsong, butterflies until all the space is filled. If I lose some pieces in winter's nudity, I recreate them with memory and give them flesh.
Working with the lean signs of this time of Earliest Spring between Aquarius and Pisces, I weave the tangible and imagined textures and colors and shapes of flowers and vegetables, trees and words into ideas which create feeling. In those fabrications, I mix past and present to make the world my own.
Unless I create the structure for spring, it cannot come. The world may change, but only I have the power to watch enough and gather enough to turn fragments into seasons. Only I can recognize what is taking shape and give it meaning for me.
By manipulating inner space, I manipulate my understanding of outer space. It is the inner space that is mine. That is where spring begins and ends.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the first full week of early spring. In the meantime, you are not a passive bystander. Gather up the pieces. Make the spring.
