Aequus nox

Spring is here. I feel it dis­tinctly. Even though I live in Santa Bar­bara, with its per­pet­u­ally mild clime, Spring still makes its annun­ci­a­tion. I don’t have any­thing to write. I just keep think­ing about the equinox; this stillness.

A cou­ple weeks ago, he took me up Figueroa Moun­tain in his new, white truck. There, and there. The first lupines; some lit­tle yel­low ones; no pop­pies, yet. Green rocks and cop­per moss, acorn caps and pink sed­i­ments. From the top, every­thing was a ruf­fled val­ley. There’s Michael Jackson’s ranch, and there’s where rich kids learn to chop wood. There’s the stone house with the cold pool, built on slop­ing land. I used to throw my keys in so I’d have to go after them.

I keep think­ing about cold keys, the taste of rust. I don’t believe in ghosts or in ani­mal emo­tions. I don’t have the energy to explain myself. Even sci­en­tists know that bad things stay in the ground. Bad things, good things, whistling a tune–molecules are altered. My jeans smell like rust and my ankles are cold. It’s been so long since I’ve held someone’s hand.

Adel­bert and Johann were best friends. Adel­bert named the Cal­i­for­nia poppy for Johann. Johann named the Sun Cup for Adel­bert. The coastal hills were there so long before them, but their nam­ing had a retroac­tive effect. It’s like they lived their lives in reverse and took their ances­tors into their wombs, or loins, I sup­pose. They claimed the lin­eage of another species, of another King­dom. They joined an expe­di­tion and did not apol­o­gize for their diaries. The one-upping–naming flower after insect after shrub for the other–went on until the first one died. By then they’d inher­ited 4.7% of the earth and took it with them, hav­ing already bro­ken the rules.

4.7% of the earth is so much more than a sin­gle Spring seen too early from a sin­gle moun­tain. Right now, there are hill­sides itch­ing with pop­pies. I wish I could wear such an obvi­ous sign of growth and be stinky with self-propagation. I wish that writ­ing (and lots of other things) didn’t require such a long, hid­den process. I want to go explor­ing and point to things and make up names for them and be fully con­vinced of my own author­ity, or at least pretend.

Spring is defi­ance. Every­thing I am work­ing on right now is about defi­ance. Lit­tle things, absurdly seri­ous, soon to be made avail­able, boldly tak­ing on mean­ing just because they exist, and threat­en­ing every­one else like badges that read “I did not waste my time,” even though I did, decid­edly, waste my time. I threw my keys in the water so I would have to get in, even though I was alone and I got right back out.

I don’t have any­thing for you now. Not even soon. I find it weird and sat­is­fy­ing that Adel­bert the Botanist is the same Adel­bert who wrote gloomy poetry and loved the tale of the man who sold his shadow to the devil. The Bikini Atoll was pre­vi­ously named after Johann. Grave-robbers got it. I like these men. What were they like as friends? Was it any­thing like the con­fes­sional of the lit­tle truck, wind­ing its way up the mountain?

I can’t form a coher­ent thought from all the stuff in my head right now. Sorry.