KJPcreations

Sparkling Drops Of Spring, by Steve Wall

The spring is undecided. A balmy heat threatens the upcoming weekend; however, clouds prevail when they forecast blue skies and sun shines when they call for rain. It’s up to the season to choose its conditions and I wait. The days are passing. My drive to work is the same as it is last week and the week before with little variation. Some days I stop for a coffee, an Americano with cold soy, and occasionally sprinkle it with nutmeg. On other mornings, if I have the time, I make a strong cup of tea at home and top it off with steamed soy.

M used to make me tea in the morning for my drive to the vineyard. It was in a big plastic cup wrapped with paper towels to protect my hands from the heat. He didn’t make the tea when he was upset with me and eventually the brewing stopped all together. I think of him when I drink my morning tea and I wish the association would disappear. One day, enough time will have passed and a cup of tea will simply be a cup of tea but for now, I wait.

I measure my windows to fit them for a fan in case the heat turns my apartment into an unbearable inferno. While looking around my place, I decide it’s time to let go of three paintings, each portraying agonizing male figures painted on wood. Years ago, I promised the artist of the two large pieces never to abandon them to a closet, so I choose to leave the paintings on the street. I live in the Alberta Arts district; surely they will find a new home. The other piece, a small wooden block purchased from an artist on the streets of San Francisco, I decide to burn.

There was a time when the artwork insinuated love and lost love, adornment of beauty, hope, connection to a moment and place and person that once made my soul melt in the Rilke kind of way, the mystical yummy kind of passion that I could taste all day long. But now, it’s just sad men on blocks of wood and it is time to let them go.

I relate to an undecided spring, at times unpredictable but choosing my own climate. There is a lonely that chokes me from the inside out balanced only by the expansive inhalation of possibility. I choke, I breath deep, I wait and the days are passing and it doesn’t seem to matter the memories or the dreams or the mundane or the morning beverage choice because life is brazen enough to lead to death. In the interim, there is weather to witness and morning drives to work with caffeine for company.