Spring

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. These are the first four lines of T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Wasteland." I know I studied it in undergrad, but all I can effortlessly recall of it now are the first five words and the last three, which are "shanti, shanti, shanti," the same words with which I end most yoga classes.

 

Eliot was a Catholic, explained my English prof, which is why he thought the mild, spring month of April cruel. It has to do with Easter.

Maybe. A random, biased, assessment by someone calling herself "GeekMom" shows what I would call a statistically significant spike in bad things happening in April. 

It does seem that lots of people have passed away this month. In no particular order some were: Mickey Rooney, Peaches Geldof, Jim Flaherty, Herb Gray, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, those five young people in Calgary, those 300 people on the South Korean ferry, the sherpas on Everest  and, just the other night, Bruce's Uncle Bill.

In cruel times like April's, a stroll among the flowers in the Allan Gardens Greenhouse can be just the thing. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen