Of Spring I Sing (or threaten to...)

Sometimes you learn things from people you know, but don't know at all, at least that's what I think when I know someone as a Facebook Friend (FBF). Moment of clarity (I have so few, I hope you appreciate this): for me, FB friends aren't really friends, they're more acquaintances; for them adding me was probably a moment of confusion while attempting to select the 'unlike' button.

I understand FB continues to add nuances to define (in its corporate opinion) the dynamic of our various online relationships though I'd have appreciated something between "roadkill with hair on the human highway" and "friend" in terms of what we are to one another.The latter has a meaning and a context for me that I don't find very often in real life and so using it in cyberspace, or in whatever ether and wire world in which FB exists, always feels a bit presumptuous to me.

Bearing in mind the degree of presumption one has to have to be someone like me and to type this stuff in the first place and then wait for people to read it. Sort of two bricks short of a hod. Tell me about the rabbits, George. I love the color of it all.

Actually that's exactly what a FBF (of a friend) neither of whom I'll ever meet, nor ever know, (from the formerly divided German nation) helped me learn and that I use to (I hope) better get through whatever winter we have left in the Northeast of the United States.

Considering the weather a lot of us on this side of the Mississippi have had since December, maybe the Northeast is more a state of mind and not so much a region. In recent years, Atlanta has had almost as much snow as Boston leading me to wonder if this is the season that Braves' fans have to learn to do the Tomahawk Chawp? (It may depend on where they pahk their carh, y'all).

One of my FBF offered the words, auf englisch, of Ward Elliot Hour, "(t)he color of springtime is in the flowers, the color of winter is in the imagination." Though that's NOT the image they suggested to complement the turn of phrase; this is the one I found and while it hasn't helped me change my opinion of winter (too Squared: too long and too cold), it has improved my appreciation of Rilke. "Live your questions now, and, perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers."

Why else do you think there are moments of more light with each passing day? We need to see where we're going or how will we know when we're there?

-bill kenny