Taste the Rainbow

Friday was the first warm, sunny day this spring in Chicago. I worked a half day and had that airplane-in-the-sky happy, soaring feeling upon walking out into the street. And there was the sense, too–that, even though you couldn't see it, a large body of water was nearby. It happens a lot this time of year. It's not that it smells like water or even fish, necessarily. It's something about the sky. It's something about the way the buildings in the distance just stop.

So, I walked through the neighborhood where I now work with my coat all rolled up in my bag, feeling sort of weightless. The whole world was wrapped up in blue skies. With the clouds giving away the curve and the shape of things. I could feel the distance and the size. I felt very, very small. And the sun, which had warmed the grass and earth and even things like garden hoses, made everything smell so familiar and promising. I was happy. So happy I couldn't decide whether to write poems or take photos. So happy that I had to be careful not to relapse in some way.  

My bus arrived and I kept thinking about how emotions are like flavors or colors that can be mixed to become other, more complex flavors and colors. Like the way I occasionally mix peppermint and orange tea. Peppermint becomes 'anger' and orange becomes 'happiness'. And mixed they become 'schadenfreude', or just, 'laughing darkly about something', I guess.

I wanted so badly to go home right then. Really home to sit on my front stoop from years ago. Or at my table in my old-old kitchen. With the windows pushed wide open and the birds singing. With the green painted wrought iron peeling. With the sound of everything and the sun shining. But then I thought about how I'd never be back there again. And how weird that was. How one day I'll probably miss my current kitchen, too. And how that was fine (and would probably taste like jelly beans or, you know, 'anxiety').