Nostalgia Beast

The season is a'changin! In case you haven't noticed it yet, here are some of the ways you can tell...

The calendar is pretty obvious about it. March 20th - WINTER. March 21st - SPRING. It's magic! (And utterly misleading.)

The flora and fauna help. The pigeons are getting friskier, and some of the trees look like they might at least be considering getting some leaves on those bare-ass branches soon.

The days are longer, which means it's not dark when I am walking to the subway, which is nice when I need to realize that my socks don't match before I get all the way to work and have them exposed under fluorescent lighting.

And my heaviest coat -- I don't call it a winter coat because it's not, just like the fan I have in my room during the summer is in no way to be considered air conditioning -- has been left untouched for a week.

But these aside, the truest way to tell that one season is ending and another is beginning is undoubtedly the Nostalgia Beast.

It's a sneaky one, that Nostalgia Beast. You can be listening to the radio on an ordinary New York morning and then find yourself thinking about a Boise hotel that you once ran amok in with the rest of your high school tennis team. Old boyfriends of the last decade suddenly seem like the best people in the whole wide world, in spite of any and every major flaw, and you get upset wondering whatever happened to that strange soccer ball / alien stuffed animal you had when you were ten.

So I'm going to have to say, yep, Spring is coming, cause I can't keep my mind out of the past, and I'm missing the way the carpet in my parents' house smelled when I would lay on the floor with all the pets, soaking up the sun coming through the windows on a Sunday afternoon.

You win this round, Nostalgia Beast. I'll see you again in June.

-Roo