When I lived in the city my connection to the weather and the seasons was very limited, the markers of change broad and unsubtle. Rain. Snow. Hot and sweaty. The day the leaves arrive on the trees.

Here, I look out the window and the grass looks 2 inches taller than yesterday, but has that sweet smell; the clover is blooming.

The peonies are here, gorgeous and brazen, then all of a sudden over, knocked out by the rain we wanted so badly.

The peas need to be picked daily… but not for long, and here’s the first strawberry. It tastes so good, shared between friends. Fruity communion.

Nature’s changing is fierce and constant. There’s an intensity not unlike riding the subway at rush hour, and it is tempting to turn the abundance and ferociousness of all this growth and plenty into another “should”, another chore, another reason to complain.

I hope I won’t do that and ignore the potential lesson — that life is plentiful and messy and overwhelmingly beautiful. And that just as we grieve the passing of one life, or season, or botched crop, another bursts open ahead.

“Listen, God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.

Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

— Alice Walker (The Color Purple)

I just had a birthday and my brother sent me the most amazing gift – a film he made using consecutive still photographs we shot when he visited me 3 years ago.

I had been commuting the full length of Manhattan several days a week and wanted somehow to describe the experience. Together we came up with the idea for this film and we spent hours riding the trains and taking pictures.

We didn’t shoot any film, just photographs one after another  (I can’t remember why) so when it came to editing it was an enormous task to stitch the photographs together, like an animation, and then edit that footage. But he did it, and I think it’s absolutely beautiful. What a gift! Thank you, Garth.

It started to rain on my way home but I had my umbrella. Once I was on the bus it began to pour down. I thought about the idea of letting myself be bored so instead of reading I watched the pattern of the water on the windows, and noticed how people were standing under awnings, waiting for the rain to pass. I saw 3 dogs tied up outside a store and they were doing the same thing as the people, staying close to the building. One of them looked up at the sky as if he was trying to guess when it would stop.

The rain seemed to make people friendlier, hanging out together when normally they’d be rushing along alone. Then the sun broke through and the light was extremely white and reflected off all the shiny wetness so that people looked like silhouettes walking down the street. It was so beautiful.