Yearning for natural light

At the moment, I'm considering a job change.  One of the factors I have to make peace with is that instead of walking six blocks to work, many of the opportunities right now involve traveling.  Quite a bit of traveling over many miles in a car. 

Yesterday I had one interview and I drove about three hours through the country-side to meet with the interviewer, a midpoint between our hometowns.  I was prepared, but I accidentally left my list of questions at home.  Today I found them, along with many pieces of writing, some of which I just published.  A notebook tossed aside in my clothes-closet, until now.  And in this notebook is a very interesting piece to me, today. Transcribing here...

     She could feel it, a gentle breeze on her soul whenever she drove by a field.  A meadow.  Some trees on the edge, deep shade, a few bees, wildflowers: purple clover, yellow black-eyed susans, white (?) that spilled behind that rusty mailbox. Those soybeans are a brilliant lemon-yellow, then rusty copper, then soft brown.
     She sat in her cubicle with the stale air, no natural light, only light from artificial sources -- an overhead fluorescent bulb, under-storage bin desk light and a small lamp from home.  Endeavoring to recreate the feeling and mood of natural light.  Endeavoring to make the best of a ill-fitting, square-peg-round-hole thing.  Making the best of it is what she excels at.

OK, gets a little sarcastic from here, but interesting that my musings from maybe 18 months ago are answering a question I have today.  I don't recall writing it, but it is all about how I don't like working in a cubicle and wish I could get out in the natural light more.  Hmmm.... interesting. Universe? 

And I do love, love, love the road-side weeds.  I have often wanted to find out who is responsible for the natural plantings on the interstates in Illinois, in the gulley between the cars driving in opposite directions.  To thank them for not mowing but sowing. The natural wave of purple, and blends of gold and beige have seemed like a painting to me more than once.  I've never met another weed-lover but there must be one out there.  It actually endangers my driving abilities as I stare at the ever-changing, never the same combinations nature has planted.  Traveling might have its perks.

I wasn't brilliant enough to stop and take a picture yesterday, but this is the idea, courtesy of google images. Your weeds are my art...

"Yes, Virginia, there really is a spring...."

It is a crazy beautiful day in central Illinois.  All I want to do is take my camera and photograph the abundant flowering tree branches, the daffodils, the bright young green of the grass, the stillness of the blue sky.    Every year, but especially this winter of 2014, you could easily convince yourself spring will probably not actually come. The winter comes back over and over when we think it is gone, like some terrible bout of flu that keeps reinfecting our households.  Pretty soon even the most strident winter-lover has given up hope and is sure that this is the year that winter is going to last 12 months.

So why live here?  Well the advantage we have over California or South Carolina or one of the other eternal spring states, is that we let spring attack us with joy here.  We can barely believe our luck that a cold wind isn't trying to down that row of red tulips. Look at them, so red.

 

We enjoy spring here the way thirsty marathon runners enjoy that next Gatorade. We relish the mild-temperatured freedom, floating on the scents and sounds, as if on a movie set.  It all feels so foreign.  We literally pinch ourselves, assuming this is a pleasant dream. And it lasts such a short time.  Spring in central Illinois is about a fortnight long. You just put away the wool socks, start to take a few breaths and the air conditioners click on as it hits the upper 80s by June.We are grateful, down to our toes, for spring here, and we never, ever take it for granted.  It is like a little miracle we observe every year.   Just when you give up hope, that is when hope arrives.  In the form of grass seed sprouting, earthworms coming up for a tan, and lilacs popping out overnight like a row of dancing showgirls down the avenue. ("Park Avenue...")

Hope thy name is springtime.