No Joke

Runners of bermuda grass on the underside of landscape cloth.

It’s April Fools day, but I don’t feel like a joke, or making a joke, or having a joke played on me. Nothing really seems funny anymore. My body aches, my spirit aches, and a random sort of meanness feels afoot. I’d like to be happy. On most days I am. Especially now with everything in bloom. I noticed yesterday that the Eve’s Necklace is turning pink with flowers, and it has become a big tree, so there will be lots of them. And there are flowers on the Marie Pavia rose. And my body aches from work, and that’s a good thing.

My aching spirit is a thing of multiple parts. Personally, I’m a broken vessel put back together like a work of Kintsugi art that’s still a bit of a work in progress, but progress nonetheless. And while my wife’s death five years back was a shattering thing, it feels as though the pieces have come back together, helped along by the realization there were other shattering things in my life, which means life is a long process of being broken and put back together. I am now simply the latest iteration of me, getting ready for the next shattering event.

On a larger level, the status quo is being shattered in Washington DC. And although it has yet to touch me personally in any meaningful way, it’s changing the air around me in ways that make me uncomfortable. And I think I might have read too many books, because nowadays I feel like a character in The Lord of Rings, taking notice of the Eye of Sauron, the Dark Lord, watching me with unceasing vigilance, which feels moderately hyperbolic, and certainly not a joke. But we’re talking about feelings here and those are mine, on this day, the first day of April, 2025.