April showers, snow and rain, high at 40, spring time bane.
So the proverbial shoe dropped yesterday. The bill came for us, after an incredible run of weekend weather around here, reaching all they way back into February, we had our come=upIt was freezing. Rained all day. As Hal Borland wrote; “April is the promise that May is bound to keep”. Well they say that around here anyway. I often think of T.S. Eliots poem The Wasteland this time of year, which opens with the line “April is the cruelest month”. For those of you who didn’t take a lit class you won’t recognize the wasteland for what it is, perhaps the most important poem of the 20th century.
Personally I like the first stanza
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Dull roots with spring rain.
Exactly how I feel about spring around here, weathers promise oft belated by winter’s last gasp. Which when I thought of when it was snowing yesterday.. just say’n.
BTW if you don’t get around to reading The Wasteland allow me to share an even better quote from it;
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
I really really really like that last line, Eliot could turn a phrase huh? Did I mention that my oldest kid’s middle name is Eliot?
He can not turn a phase however. He can however, solve equations which require similar sorts of mental acuity and abstract adeptness with which great writers hone their craft. Or so they tell me, mathematics for me being one of those disciplines where I have to take other peoples word for it since I can’t get my head through it’s secret codes.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Shakespeare said it best in Hamlet I think, when discussing the dread that comes with the contemplation of mortality;
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Ooo I’m a little dark today. Probably because the weather yesterday had me house bound. The weather on Sunday was much nice, but I still found myself house bound, one of those days where nothing sounded good.
Oh well, tomorrow I’m off to Las Vegas for a few days for work. Weather out there should improve my attitude.
