C'est printemps!

I've recently taken up a fascination with people's trash. I'm not referring to the everyday, smelly garbage of banana peels and tampon wrappers, although that kind is very interesting and can reveal a whole lot of juicy stuff about a person, like that they use tampons or eat bananas. But right now, I am talking about trash in the sense of baggage. Extra stuff that people don't know what to do with. Stuff that sticks around because it doesn't know how to go away. Card tables and woodscraps, spare tires (either the metaphorical kind or the rubber kind), or emotional baggage left over from a bad break-up-- everyone seems to possess it. And every bit of it seems to tell a story.

Upon the first promising signs of winter thaw, I went on a walk and soon discovered how amazing trash seemed to me. The discarded. The residuals of life. The stuff people keep around because it's too difficult or painful to part with. But piled high in a disheveled heap eyesore, it seemed to have a melancholic artfulness to it, simply because I didn't know why it was there. Especially the bathtub that someone left out in their front yard by some towering scaffolding that hugged the side of the house. This sight made me think that perhaps these people are moving on and leaving the old behind-- spring cleaning, as it were.

I began thinking of my own spring cleaning. My own lingering baggage. The receipts, the endless laundry piles, the omnipresent dust specks that veil my room in a sheath of denial and forgetfulness. My mental pathways that have stirred negativity and spawned immaturity. My un-exercised body and the "love handles" that grace my small frame. Sure, it all tells a story, but it needs to go. It's spring, it's wonderful, and I've spent too long shrouded in winter, wrapped up the dirty gauze of my own self-pity. In my own covert, chilled little world, precious bits of life slipped by as I was sleeping.

I worry it is cliche to talk about "spring rejuvenation," but it's the first time it's ever made sense to me. I never saw spring cleaning as something symbolic. Now I see myself as its human embodiment. Now there's a mess in my living room and it's cleaning time.