Kittenland

I have felt sour lately, and crabby. Can you tell here? Perhaps I have passed it off as pure hilarity, and it's not so bad that there isn't a steady vein of humor in it. After all there aren't exactly horrible reasons behind the strain in my life. Much of it simply comes from having to save up all my vacation time for a luxuriously glorious, five week Fall anniversary trip. But life is compressed when one shows up to work everyday for months and months and months. There is never quite enough leisure to let any of the mundane tensions of it all fully unwind. More and more I always feel like I am hurrying, racing to meet some deadline, squeezing some last thing into its ever disappearing slot, endlessly on the run.

Today was a brilliant Spring day. I would have loved to walk to work because I am more in the world when I do that. I walk in blog posts and in air. I see everything around me. But there was no time. I had to grab a bike and cut that half hour out of my commute. So I did.

Biking makes anyone 60% more of an asshole. I don't know how it does that, but it is the special power of bicycling, along with its clever energy efficiency and pleasant sense of freedom. The world is blooming, tulips are thick in the front yards of my neighbors' houses, framed by plush purple bushes, and, best of all, graced by the flower trees. Great trees fat with fragrant white blossoms are peaking in my neighborhood, radiating light, exploding with joy and promise. If only I could see them. But I am racing by on my bike. Speed and urgency blind me. I have to be at the University in 28 minutes.

Then it happens. I am pedaling. I look to my left and a kitten ambles out of the side yard of some house. A cat crosses the street up ahead. Every house on the block has a white tree in an exotic and overwhelming bloom. The whole world smells like flowers. The wind comes and the trees snow petals onto the perfect young green lawns. So many flowers fall that the street starts to turn white with them. The street is a cloud. The trees are giant flowers in the sky. Where am I?

I am late for nothing. For ten seconds I am freed from everything. There is no work to get to, no doctor appointment tomorrow morning, no bike underneath me, no nagging lack of sleep, no schedule, nothing is required. Nothing will ever be required.

Ten seconds in forever. I have pierced the heart of time and it is all flowers. I am in Kittenland.