Cherry Blossom Time

The sun came out again in San Diego today.  The sky was the righteous, cloudless blue we've come to expect, making Life feel possible once more...just in time for this Sunday's onset of the chronotropic mania I call Daylight Squandering Time. We set out  to look for evidence that, even in this perplexing year, the northern hemisphere could produce a Spring.

The Park had a tentative air; there were few visitors for such a fair day, but there was promise to be found.  The Tarot Card Lady had set up shop outside the Mingei Museum.  The school children trooped along in atypically tidy lines, looking surprised to be outside after weeks of unusually wet, cold, gray  weather. Everyone seemed a little stunned by the sunlight and a green so rich and impetuous, it dazzled our eyes.

There was a Rent-A-Segway tour in progress, adding an alien note amongst the blinking, peering strollers. I'm sure the...are they called "drivers"?... felt clever, but I found them first amusing, then jarring. Maybe someday we'll all be Segwaying, but today the zippy, angled tourists in helmets seemed entirely self-referencing and out of place. They moved too fast to see anything; maybe the point was to be seen. You'd think they'd be right at home in the land of Dr. Seuss, but, if they don't fit here, they'll never be more than an oddity.

There were tempting shows at the San Diego Museum of Art and some lovely Spanish guitar luring us from the Artist's Village, but our minds weren't on metal sculpture or music. The Japanese Garden was our goal. It was the one attraction we'd never seen in all our visits.  The Oriental propensity to create a universe in a teacup was on display and we appreciated the devotion this bonsai gardener brought to his work, but conifers were not what we were hungry for today.

We were looking for harbingers of hope.  We were hungry for good news and only the very first cherry blossoms would do.

Peace.