Tuesday, April 04, 2006 -- 8:35 PM

Spring be Gettin' All Up in this Air.

I liked that sentence so much that I made it a title.

Today, for the first time this year, I couldn't see my breath. It was so warm outside that it was no longer the steamy cold breath that one has in the winter; it was quite invisible. This so alarmed me that I lit a cigarette, and was happy to once again have something more visible emitting from my mouth.

Later on I went for a walk to the store for some supper, and spring was just all over the place, with water running down the gutter and mud and the soft, fragile ground. You could hear the water everywhere, constantly. There were some boys playing street hockey on a quiet residential sidestreet, and I thought back to those heady days of guts and glory. We fought each other hard on that thawing, sweating pavement, but our only enemies were the interruptions of parents. They never seemed to care who was winning or how close we were to scoring a great goal, and they were always far too demanding for our lifestyle. Dinner never mattered to us, or darkness, or cold, or wet. They didn't understand that some things were more important to us. These politics of winning and losing, winners and losers, the champions and the defeated, these were our traditions that epitomized life, and continue to today, and will always. The hierarchy lives on, it is life.

I watched the kids playing, and watched as a car pulled slowly around the corner: another interruption. As far as we made the street our arena, it was never truly our domain. It was another thing to resent, as we moved the net, stood on the curb irritably waiting for the vehicle to move on, then restarted the play. Still, I think we felt a little pride despite it all. We knew that whoever was in the car respected what we were doing, and usually we'd get a nod of thanks from the driver, especially if the grownup was a male. He understood that he was interrupting our ceremony, that he was the one inconveniencing us, and not the other way around. It was no secret that it was he, sitting in his car, who was the lesser being.

As I walked on, I remembered how fast those days had gone. Everything had melted now, and it was hot and dry, so very dry.