Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.
“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

-t.s. eliot

Overnight the wisteria vines have pushed out their heavy racemes. Every year I'm caught off guard when I see the first bloom. For me, it's a punch in the gut of memory. The house that I grew up in had wisteria vines tearing away at it from every angle and I loved the destructive beauty. My first and best friend, Tracey, would gather armloads of wisteria and drape them around her room...across her curtain rod...on her bedside table. She has been gone, her life cut so very short for over eleven years now and I think of her every single day, but I still feel that punch of remembrance on the first day of wisteria's bloom.

My egg cup obsession is still holding strong and they are now popping up as pin cushions around the Lumpling studio.

My little guys arrived from Loloko!

For right now they are sitting on the papier mache bunny that I've been working on, but one day they'll have to move if I ever get back to work on finishing the bunny. His ears are a sweet hand dyed flannel that I like to pet.

This week marks the anniversary of my friend Ryan's suicide. He was young, troubled and had a penchant for violence, but he was also a sweet punk rock boy and I wonder who he could have been if flesh and steel would have never met that night.