Time is beginning to flow by me more quickly, now.

The weekend seemed to go by in a flash; Saturday I spent helping Chris get new glasses and then relaxing, and Sunday was spent doing some spring cleaning. I got a bunch of stuff clean, and cleaned out my bedroom closet, in the process getting rid of what seemed like about half of the contents.

Hooray, hooray for clean closets! I keep poking my head into it just to look at the clean floor and the shelves that have that particular feel to them that happens when everything is in the right place. And the floors are smooth and everything smells nice.

I know, I'm awfully easy to please.

Spring brings with it not just more metaphorical motion but more actual motion, as well. Because it's nice out, I'm walking to more places, and moving more quickly than I do in the winter. To help with this, I've decided to do the Walk to Rivendell. I may be a major geek, but I am a geek with strong legs.

And since last weekend was the first nice weekend of the year and this coming weekend also promises to be fair, it's officially the start of the hiking season. I think I'm going to hit Federation Forest; Chris is going to come along to make sure that I don't fall, break my neck, and die. While later in the season I'll probably do a lot of solo hiking, I just want to make sure I've got everything right before I strike out on my own.

Eventually, I want to relearn how to read topo maps and do some challenging day hikes, the ones that require navigation. Like Mailbox Peak, for example. Also, I need to learn how to make a stamp for myself (I know the design I want, I just have to figure out how to carve it) and go letterboxing.

The creative side of things is moving along, too. Pretty soon, I should have the extra energy required to start making things again--mastering coptic stitch, moving on to bigger books, finishing my artjournal, etc. I'm already taking more pictures; one of these days I'll get the gallery software I'm trying to run working, as well.

I am full of plans. This happens in the spring, a lot.

I just have to remember to schedule time to sleep, too.

Ripping up old t-shirts into rags tonight, I was thinking about an accusation I saw in an article a few weeks ago--saying that women are turning to the traditional crafts and homemaking as a shelter against the world outside. Knitters, especially, were accused of participating in some great betrayal of the political by retreating into a world where the yarn is soft and the patterns hypnotic.

Am I hiding from the world outside by being so very present in my house? By playing with paper, with cloth, with words? I don't knit or crochet yet, though i'd like to learn. (I fear I wouldn't have the time required, however. Any time I'm sedentary, I'm doing something with my hands--reading or computer stuff. I don't sit and watch TV.)

Is what I'm doing meaningless, because it isn't writ large on the world's stage, because I'm not out adding my voice to the angry crowd?

Five years ago, I would have thought yes. Now, I'm not so sure. While being political made sense and it made me feel like I was doing something, it wasn't making me happy. Maybe this is the thing that happens when you get close to thirty: you get tired. Your ears hurt. Your feet hurt and all you really want to do is go home, maybe have a beer or some cider, and forget, just a little bit, about all the wrong things that happen in the world.

Maybe it's not a noble truth.

But it is true.

I tried being noble. I protested and went on marches and attended Pride Day every year without fail. I had my picture on the cover of the Daily Iowan. A blurry, not terribly recognizable picture of me, but a picture all the same.

And, you know, I felt like I was doing something.

But now....now. I'm just not feeling up to it any more. I'm not sure where my anger went. I know I left it around here somewhere. It's probably in one of the closets I haven't cleaned out yet, lurking and waiting to strike.

But really, right now, I'm not angry any more. Much. We've got an awful President and there's not much I can do about that. And, yes, I can get heated up about child labor or hunger or the fact that a living wage is difficult to come by in this country right now.

But for everything that's broken, something also works. It doesn't make up for it. But i'm too tired to be angry about the broken things. Maybe for now it's enough to appreciate the whole things, the fact that I am lucky enough to earn a living, to have friends, to have sex I want with people I want to sleep with.

A lot of the anger went away when I discovered that, no, I really have no more desire to have relationships beyond friendship with men. i'd struggled with that part of myself so often and the fights were so fierce that when the bell rang and it just didn't show up to the ring, it was almost a letdown.

That part of me got bored and left. Thereby resolving a major chunk of the angst of the past ten or so years rather neatly. I will always go through sexual phases, I think; I like to sample what's available to me. Take a nibble of the apple, a taste of the herb, my tongue against a granite boulder, which tastes like the bones of the earth.

(Yes. I used to lick rocks. So?)

But for the moment, it is spring and I am not angry.

And that is a blessing to be savored as much as the longer days and the breeze coming in the window.

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