Home Repair

Today (Monday, March 18, 2024) was all mischief and mayhem. Shaggy evergreen arms were dripping with pine cones. Bright yellow forsythia, like wild wizards, were waving their wands in every direction. Willows were weeping the prettiest tears you've ever seen. Miniature trees were blowing marshmallow bubbles all over themselves. A hawk was nervously mumbling on a branch overhead, preparing for some grand announcement. And I fell for it all. I was all smiles, and high fiving trees to watch their petals dance away in the breeze. And what's this at my feet? Oh! Just another luxurious pile of pink confetti adorning a sidewalk like it was a bath in a Persian palace.

How absurd! The audacity of Nature to doodle all over our civilized, industrial canvases of cement and asphalt! Which brings me indirectly and surprisingly to the Hebrew calendar. Specifically, 8 Adar II, 5784 (Note: On the Hebrew calendar, the month of Adar gets to repeat on a leap year -- how cool is that?! I would like to repeat the month of December, wouldn't you? Or perhaps the month of July! But I like October, too). Anyway, the connector here is the "Daily Thought" on Chabod.org for this day -- the 8th of Adar II (March 18, 2024):

"Beautifully Absurd."

"The world is absurd. Ugly absurd.

To repair ugly absurdity, you can't just be normal.

You need an alternative absurdity.

A beautiful absurdity."

So let me revise an earlier statement: "How BEAUTIFULLY absurd! The munificence of Nature to shed its treasures on our cracked utilities, its colors on our paved and pallid arts!" Some might wonder if these spring shenanigans are early or late, or even worthy of mention. I'd say they're lifesavers. And that they're right on time.