It really feels like the water has run dry.

Subconsciously I’ve been waiting out the weeks, allowing the tedium of each day to consume me. Tedium of course in the sense of all the million tiny things that we complete in the name of wading through our day with reasonable satisfaction. Now, more than ever, I tend to these tasks and new pastimes with an uncharacteristic focus; if someone handed me a Golf Digest there’s a strong chance that I would eat it up. All of this to temporarily push my brain from where inertia keeps bringing it.t

This is how the day goes: in between the supermarket, the commute, the laundry, and yes noting the growing quantity of sunshine, I take constant breaks from these first-person experiences to check in on How It’s Going. That’s the inertia doing its work. I try to reconcile the state of the world with a human brain that only wishes to arrive at logical outcomes. These are of course in short supply when we hear about nations getting leveled and families being summarily executed. This inability to internally reconcile opposing truths only leaves me with a gnawing sense of malaise. 

And to close the aperture and only speak of writing, it’s hard—if not nearly ridiculous—to write about anything at all. We’ve all read more than our share of folks postulating their opinions online…. I can hardly say that I want to add to the clutter.

Yes, it is springtime. Yes, there are blossoms on the trees. Yes, the first crop of fava beans has arrived at the supermarket. The sun is rising earlier which automatically makes everything feel more tolerable. These are all truths of which I have no influence, yet somehow I always cling to them as a means to shake off winter. But it feels pretty hard to enjoy these things when I can’t help but open my phone at any moment and witness Russian tanks stuck in a snow-frosted mud. An emblematic microcosm of the larger quagmire that one despot in his isolation has created. My intellectual brain knows what is bound to happen and what this invasion might mean in the long run, but my emotional and naive side is bewildered by witnessing something that I never thought would come to pass. 

I’m still looking for signs of spring. I can’t help but be hopeful amidst all the impending doom and continued loss of life that the world is going to record and then post for the rest of the world to watch with visceral horror. It’s the rebirth-death-rebirth cycle of things on a twisted scale. Twisted for how we humans insert ourselves into the cycle. In Rome, now that the mimosa trees have flowered, the cherry blossoms are in bloom. Running through one of the parks this morning, I spotted a line that was reminiscent of my old runs on the reflecting pool in DC. Gorgeous and therapeutic in their simplicity. They remind me of the dogwood trees back on Cape Cod that suddenly wake up and recolor the landscape for a couple of weeks.

In between the jolts of dread when I contemplate what’s to come, I am now setting my sights on the wisteria that will soon be coloring many of Rome’s orange and yellow walls purple. Downtown there is one awning that I’ve been watching very closely. Most times of the year, it is just a green jumble of soft branches that look bunched up like a comforter on the end of a bed. Right now there are some yellow flowers brimming at the edges—and this makes me really excited. This is because every spring its metamorphosis sees it transforming into a purple waterfall of wisteria spilling over it. It will happen soon. And then after that, we will see the Magnolias come out to play. Right now I find myself looking up to the trees, the walls, to the facades of buildings to see what other flowers might be on the way.

Alongside the budding spring flowers, there is something else that is springing up around Rome. Much like the rainbow “Andrà Tutto Bene” signs that two years ago folks hung from balconies, now you see rainbow flags (the “peace” flag in Italy) as well as Ukrainian ones that are hung in recognition for what is taking place just a few doors down. During my morning run, I saw that both the embassies of Latvia and Georgia are displaying the Ukrainian flag alongside their own. I have not done a tour of other regional “neighbors” of Russia, but I have a strong suspicion that other embassies are demonstrating a similar sentiment. I will also note that another large located by the Tiber that for two years had a Russian flag randomly hung from it…. that flag is now gone…for one reason or another. 

The war in Ukraine is nothing new in terms of conflict on the planet (and of course the question bearing an obvious asks why this is getting so much more traction than other conflict). On the whole, year by year, nothing really changes. Each time I find myself putting my way after getting another news alert, I can only hear the refrain a song by Tom Waits. It’s a simple song with a simply refrain: “The world keeps turning. The world keeps turning.”  The life admin of each day. The aggression within humanity. The changing seasons.  Here we are. That’s the adult in me talking who has a really hard time imagining that everything always eventually turns out for the best.

My big plan for the foreseeable future is to maybe just post the flowers as they start to show themselves and then give way to summer. But even then it’s still so easy to slip back to remember the undercurrent of uncertainty. Walking home, I passed a flower stand that had bunches of sunflowers. After the past month, most of us in the world have developed a whole new appreciation for what these mean. And so we strive to balance the subjects of the day with others that are not so heavy, if only for a moment. It’s easy to enjoy your town when you it’s being shelled by an outside force. Bah.

The inertia of being pulled back to reality is no walk in the park. But I do think it is important to allow it an appropriate place in our minds. And not just on this occasion where nuclear war suddenly seems like such a horrifically conceivable option— but in others times of trouble too. In other places. I don’t really like to admit any of this—because clearly I’d rather spend my time running through parks of spring flowers. But here we are, and the world keeps turning.