Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve never been to Ireland, but the past two times I’ve visited northern California in the early spring I’ve been amazed by how much it looked like (my completely uninformed) vision of what the coast of Ireland must look like, with rocky cliffs and magnificent greens. Then, when I posted this picture on Instagram, an Irish follower thought I might even be in Ireland! (Now I really want to visit!) Here’s a rainbow from last year’s drive up the Pacific Coast Highway:
I made this newspaper popout last year, but I was inspired by the photos of this week’s school walkout to post it here again. I hope these kids stay fed up and change the world.
It’s March 15, the Ides of March. Last night my brother-in-law tweeted, “Tbh in my life the Ides of March have historically been excellent days sorry Caesar.” I got to thinking about it, and yeah, historically, for about the past decade this has been a pretty excellent time for me, too. I usually have something going on at SXSW, most of my books came out in the early spring, my youngest son was born March 11, etc.
I checked in with my ol’ pal Thoreau, and on March 15, 1852, he is celebrating the arrival of spring in his journal: “This afternoon I throw off my outside coat.” At this point the year is 20% over, but Thoreau doesn’t seem at all worried about March 15. If he’s thinking about it at all, it’s only in the way the Romans marked it as a deadline for settling debts. Thoreau is 34 years old, same age as me, and he wants to be worthy of this life he’s been given:
I wish to begin this summer well; to do something in it worthy of it and of me… I pray that the life of this spring and summer may lie fair in my memory. May I dare as I have never done! […] I am eager to report the glory of the universe; may I be worthy to do it…. It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.
I feel much like Thoreau. I’m cooking on this new thing, spring has come to Texas, and I want to be worthy of my life and all I’ve been given. I know I don’t deserve it, but I want to work in a way deserving of it.
It’s often hard for me to return home from California, a place of such obvious beauty, still so foreign to me. This past trip, I was obsessed with the smell of eucalyptus driving down Highway 1 and the surprisingly lulling sound of the fog horns on the Golden Gate Bridge. They blew almost every night of our trip, like some great sleeping monster snoring out in the Bay.
But Texas has rolled out the red carpet weather for us — the snapdragons have bloomed in my wife’s garden, and the trees in the front yard are “coming into leaf… like something almost being said.”
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