April is the cruellest month

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

T. S. Eliot – “The Burial of the Dead” – The Waste Land

I haven’t been writing for a while. And I haven’t been here for a while as well. Here means home. Here means the place where your heart and veins belong to. I haven’t had much time to think, I have tried to keep busy, even with useless thoughts, maybe just not to think. Plus, it was winter. Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow. Winter allowed us not to think, not to remember, not to plan. But today spring surprised us. I haven’t been home for three months, and here I am, damning the day I came back, because with spring memories and expectations arrive too.

Spring mixes memory and desire. Memories of the past, a past now gone. My lake, my rides, the best years of our lives, up and down some hills, and then to the pool, where everyone knows you, and by the streets, where friends greet you, where even at the supermarket you’re more than welcome. Memory of a time when everything was easier, when choices were not choices but simple happenstance. Memory of a road that was simple and straight, towards the lake, towards the river, and down we went.

Desire of regaining that paradise, desire of feeling good at home again, desire of that safe harbor where no one can harm you, desire of transporting a bit of peace here too. Because you know that you were not happy here, because you know you escaped, one way or another, either from reality, from that awful and obliged and dead reality that was spreading in front of your eyes, or from failure, failure of your life. You decided and you escaped from what seemed a dead end. And yet, it was here, it was simple. It was that simple choice of staying and decaying, and dying, and withering away in paradise. Yet, we chose something else, we chose the difficult climb up the hill, with bare hands, and yet that hill is far away from home. And the desire that now haunts me is just returning home and being happy here and now.

Eliot was right. It’s spring that mixes memory and desire and awakens us, hollow men and women. And now that we feel something, we feel the weight of those memories and we feel that desire breathing on our neck, what shall we do? We must carry on. Carry on with what we were doing, living two lives for a while. Being strong and carrying on. There is nothing else at the moment.

Keep it wild and simple

AnaKWildness