Sydenham, Springtime

I forget that the term 'Spring Fever' is not just a literary term. I feel flushed. Slightly manic. I haven't had it this bad for years. All of a sudden. Spring impaled itself into my senses right on the dot of 1 September. The Spring fever keeps bubbling out my ears. I'm sad for my northern hemispherean compatriots that their Summer has ended, but I have earned this Spring :)

Tonight when I got on the train I couldn't help smiling, at my book, which wasn't funny, at a woman nearby who had the most expressive face. She was obviously doing some heavy-duty thinking - something I have been unable to do for the past two days. The heavy duty thinking showed itself all over her face. She kept lifting her eyes up so her forehead would wrinkle. Her mouth would pout, her mouth would turn itself onto one side like a cartoon mouth, so that her nose would twitch. It was so full on. I think she might have an answer for the Middle East peace crisis.

Me, I can't focus for too long on much. My eyes kept being drawn to that woman and beyond her, to the older woman wearing a long black imitation leather jacket and carrying a large potted plant. It spilled itself over the sides of the pot in rapturous applause. I don't know what it was, but it was green and light green and it lustred up the carriage. Next to me, a young Asian man held a bunch of lilliums, a gift in plastic cellophane, so young that none of them had opened to tell me their colours.

The woman with the rapturous plant got off at West Footscray. When I got off at the next stop along, the sky was darkening but not dark, not like it has been for months and months on end whenever I arrive on the platform. Tonight it was an aching colour of deep blue velvet violet, like the Vicks Vaporub jar. My tree, in the parking lot next door - the tree I love with my eyes four times a week, was budding new foliage for the first time. It felt the way it feels when you listen to a new song on the second listen and know you're going to love this song so much that you take a mental snapshot of how it felt in your relationship at the very beginning :)

I'm so afevered there's nothing for it but to go and do some cleaning. I have a new CD to listen to (Ohio, Over the Rhine) and oh, it all feels so rich I think I'll just eat the air for dinner (which is good, 'cause there's no clean plates left).