Thursday, April 24, 2008

Good Metaphors in the Springtime

Who knows why, but my favorite images come to me next to water in the springtime. Sometimes it's like taking an old favorite shirt out of the closet and remembering how it feels.

When I have one of those thoughts, I feel like I could go and live with it for a hundred thousand years.

It's been a couple weeks now since the feeling of the year turned on the realization that the end is near. And the truth is that this is one of my favorite feelings: living while knowing that there will be an end to what you have. And another truth is that I've discovered some things that I love here in Spain: the expression, "forma de ser" which means "way of being" and is used when talking about people; poetry on Monday mornings; looking at the velvety-green headed ducks floating on the river; and stories, lots of lots of stories told the animated, Spanish way.

Somebody asked me recently what I want for the future of my life. I don't know if it's that I haven't thought about that in a while, or whether my thoughts have changed, or whether the way the question was asked just touched me more deeply than other recent times; but in any case, the question set me thinking . . . and I thought it probably a good question to ask ourselves every now and again.