Month: September 2016

Winter to Spring

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In the stillness of winter before the turning point comes you hope this would be the last time The last wrong, the last fight But the light darkens, then brightens again not waiting for you And you reach for it because you want to grow too Maybe this is how flowers live a tree, a grass Leave the safety and warmth of the soil reach toward the sky See this luminous world for the first time the freshness and sweetness of air the softness of rain Understand with shock the fear of thunder, hail, frost the hot days that never end Oh, just sigh like the moon, the stars like the neverending cascade of beauty that is day and night The whole of the world can be felt from the root of a single flower The turning point comes winding you around as easy as sliding around a corner as hard as growing a new skin I remember the stillness of winter the electric blue of the soil Then movement comes, and its radiance gives …

American Dream

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The conventional wisdom used to be that there was a “First World” and a “Third World,” a “New World” and an “Old World.” Your home culture was also supposed to be thought of as what you leave behind. Perhaps decadent, perhaps repressive, but always undesirable in some way and that was supposed to be the emphasis. It was what you needed to grow away from. Your home culture was considered to be in the past. Certain countries, certain places also were considered to be backward, to lag behind. But in recent years, this attitude changed. People have begun to realize that we have been in the same time all along, and there was no “First World” or “Third World.” This is true when you think about. While the more modern, technologically advanced countries provided better infrastructure, the “Third World” and the “Old World” countries still had those ancient things, old ways, that provided the balance to sterility, over-emphasis on progress, over-reliance on technology. For me, personally, the American Dream is no longer the aspirational, prosperity-based …

Generations

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In the winter of 2011, a time that felt like the first breath of spring, when people were beginning to say and do exactly what they wanted to do all along, I remember going to the grocery store at night and seeing a young black man helping a middle-aged white woman load groceries into her car in the parking lot. It was a moment that imprinted on my mind both because of how much it reminded me of all the simple, spontaneously kind gestures that I have seen of my generation – in real life, online, here, around the world – as well as everything that happened in the past few years. The years of 2013-2016 have been such a horrifyingly cruel, dark time. It has been so much more violent than what I ever expected and what I remember from my childhood in the ‘80s and ‘90s. For me, nothing prepared me for this. Not stories, not history, not anything. It was the randomness of it, and how irrational and unprecedented it was, the …

Welcome to The Spring Magazine!

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This is an idea of mine that has taken hold, grown, changed many times, for the better part of three years now. The first three stories are meant to reflect my feelings about the major changes that have been underway these past few years, to represent what has been happening, reflect and, now that the world is a bit more peaceful, take stock. After these first stories, expect a mix of news articles, essays and fun stuff in the coming months. I’m excited to get back into the mix and write about local happenings, DIY events, the environment, and do some commentary on pop culture, nature writing, and reflections on politics and social changes. Perhaps also a movie review here and there. I hope you’ll grab a coffee or tea, pull up a comfy chair, and have a good read. All my best, Monica