Waiting For A Compass

I am eating radishes for dinner. Purple ones. It's gorgeous, perfect, nighttime spring outside, and the lilac air spins the blades of the turned-off fan languidly in the window and tosses the candle flames around. I'm thinking about the pink-red rhubarb at the farmers market in the morning, about the farmers who will be waking up soon, about the grassy lot that I will park on when I get there. I'm thinking about dark, strong coffee, about getting my hands on an old-fashioned newspaper and a baguette. I am thinking about relics. I am trying to figure out why it's been so hard to be present, and I'm trying to figure out where I've been.

It's ten o'clock, and I feel guilty from having eaten a bagel and a chocolate coin when I got home from work, irritable and too lethargic to make a real dinner or -- gasp -- even mix a cocktail. Yes, I know firsthand that bagels and chocolate coins are the kinds of things that make us feel even more lethargic, at least after those glorious ten minutes whilst they are consumed. And it happened. I dragged more. I promised myself it would not be dinner, but I am by myself tonight, which means no structure, very little direction, a lot of laundry, a fair amount of poking around, quite a lot less singing and dancing than usual, and, well, radishes for dinner.

I've bitten my lip no less than seven times today, and it's now swollen and an obnoxious delight to gnaw on. The salt on the radishes isn't helping, but I just got a new box of Maldon and I was so anxious to pounce on it. I bite my lip again, half-cursing and half-laughing. I taste the metallic twinge of blood, and chew a radish slowly, slowly, trying to avoid further injury. It's nearly Saturday, and I've vowed to do something substantial before I shut down this chicken shop and go to bed. Substantial things could include, but are not limited to, eating more vegetables and pretending the bagel never happened, chewing my lip all the way off, reading my new Farm Fresh Atlas of Southeastern Wisconsin, folding the laundry so that I don't end up sleeping on top of it, vacuuming, listening to the neighbors arguing through the open windows, researching the NATO infiltration that's happening downtown, or paging through recipes, hunting for decadent weekend plans.

The world is honking and whooshing by, and, for some absurd reason, someone has their air conditioner on, and I hear it humming outside, shifting on and clunking off, and I wonder which of my neighbors considers 68 degrees too hot. I putter into the kitchen to sniff at the crockpot, which contains a brisket that I picked up yesterday on my way home from work. It lazes about in its bath of barbecue sauce, patiently waiting until morning when it will fall apart under my forks as I shred it. I won't promise to not have it for breakfast.

The weeks have been both long and short lately, and it simultaneously feels like it is always the weekend and never the weekend. The spring has been perfect, and it has finally melted my dark, winter-minded heart with its sun and rain, its asparagus and its spinach, its wind and its awkward, mighty green-everything-everywhere. I get ahead of myself, though, dreading the heat of summer, but spring begs me to just shut up and focus on it, on the right now. And I'll try. But these days, this weather! It doesn't seem real! It's impossibly springy, surreal and magical. The lake looks like it took a giant gulp of the Caribbean, and the leaves are so green that there's not even a word invented for the color. I look outside, and it's my outside, because this is the kind of weather I'll not hesitate to own. It's what we've earned after six months of muck and cold. We're here. We did it!

The beginning of the end of this evening started with radishes, and it will, I believe, find its ending of its end in radishes. I'll slice up one more, I think, and I'll watch the salt draw out the water before all the radish coins are all gone from the plate. I'll breathe in the night air, I'll listen to the spring as it cranks along in this noisy, terrible, beautiful city that I love to hate so much. I'll think about how tomorrow is a new day (whoever came up with that one sure wasn't kidding!) and I'll try to remember that sometimes all it takes is the smell of warm, wet earth, or the sound of whoosh, or the sight of green-without-a-name, or even just a radish, in order to find your way.