Borders

Spring is well on its way. Winter is over it seems. Although, some say that we can expect a week of frost in April, which will be a fatal shock to the innocent flowers and bees frolicking in the sun right now. I have a nagging feeling that something is wrong when I look at the trees from out of my window. They are barren, their naked, desolate branches stretching out above against the clear blue sky like silhouetted fractal line art. Some of them have red leaves bunched up shamefully around them near the trunk. Looking at these naked figures, their lack of cover, their bare poverty, I feel so disgusted that I turn my gaze away.

A while passes by before I finally flesh out the tiny idea which had been clawing at my brain for the past hour: when I look outside, it’s surprisingly hard to say whether it’s spring or autumn. It is hard to say whether winter is on its way out or is on its way in. That unnerves me. That and the nudity of the trees. I will concede, it does take some determined staring and lack of movement to reach that level of rootlessness, timelessness and unlinearity of things. Only focused unplugging leads to that unnerving feeling.

Borders are such tenuous things. They never really belong. Or they belong to one too many. I am in it now, in the border, and I can’t tell the way I came from and the way I want to go.