The Ghost Inside

The calendar says for those of us in the Northeast and, at least theoretically, most of the rest of the nation, this winter of our discontent is drawing to a close. Next weekend is the start of Daylight Savings and in less than two weeks the swallows return to Capistrano. The Boys of Summer are already the rounding into shape as the Guys of the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues, and not a moment too soon, so this first weekend of the third month of the first year in the second decade of the twenty-first century should, I hope, be the start of better things.

I know it's been a rocky time for many of us for quite some time and you have to look hard to find reasons to be cheerful (if you don't like baseball I'm not even sure it's possible, but to each her/his own, I suppose). I'm thinking another thing that separates us from many of the other travellers here on the Big Blue Marble is our capability to make ourselves and one another happy and willingness to do so. I cannot claim to have ever seen two ocelots doing knock-knock jokes, and can't recall seeing a robin red-breast do a prat fall to cheer up the other birds in a tree, and I've watched a lot of Animal Planet while staying at a Holiday Inn Express.

Dylan offered that it takes a lot to laugh-it takes a train to cry. My mother, world-renowned mom of six of the most thick-headed and strong-willed children to ever walk the planet, demonstrated her smartness to us all when, without consulting the Internet (there was life before ether. Who knew?), she told us it took more muscles to frown than it did to smile. We believed her because she was our Mom and it didn't hurt that she was also right, but how did she know?

So we can wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up faster (and yeah, Michael, I know where I swapped out one consonant for another and why). I always wear trousers with pockets so I have someplace to put all the fun. We can promise to not miss what we do not have and enjoy our now in the now and look towards tomorrow with hope and not dread. "I'm carving 'em up through the dust in your town. Crawling over rubble just to sound me out. Tend to wonder why?"
-bill kenny