Sun Day

Another beaming day--the dog and I take a long walk around the neighborhood and criss-cross between the returning tourist walking groups and little puddles of evaporating snow. It smells like spring and cigarettes; I had forgotten what that smell was like. At the corner of Morton Street and 7th avenue I stop for a bit and stare straight into the sun. At such an unpleasant corner, the most overwhelming sense of joy and relief. We are alive. 

I reread Kerouac for the hundredth time, and again I turn the first pages with the cynicism of my years, unbelieving that it could possibly do to me still what it lit in me then, but I am proved wrong, as ever. The dream of America, of magic and life's inestimable sadness, I turn the pages till my eyes bleed and my soul is revived. Thirteen years of chasing madness only for this dilapidated paperback with the front cover fallen off and it is as beautiful now as it ever was in the rose-colored vision of my youth.

There is more to this all than our hearts can possibly hold. Spring returns. We are alive.