Nothing is permanent, so what is real? At the root of all of this change and constant movement, is love, omnipresent and warming, as genuine as the slanted light illuminating the tops of the baby leaves. I love spring. I’ve never felt so much affection and wonder at this season before, nor has been my heart as open, my days equally so – and quiet. It’s funny how much things can change in a week, but for those of us who are living, the heart beats and pulses, whooshes the blood around the body and beats again.

Nothing is permanent, the body changes in an instant. The heart is a symbol of love, but there isn’t anything lovely about it unless you consider its ability to be strong, to give life. The breath gives life. but a pair of lungs would be comical on a greeting card; maybe they should consider that for the next Hallmark holiday, insensitive in its consumerism and lack of concern for where people are in this golden sunshiny Spring season.

Nothing is permanent, love is real. Every morning I read the words “practice and all is coming” but I don’t wait to wait for something that might not happen any more. I want to take a piece of chalk and write “practice, and all is coming in each moment,” because that to me is more accurate. That is all we have. And the undercurrent of love makes it all possible, and something slightly more accessible in this city where people are pleasant and strangers converse and become friends at the bus stop. Where lovers hold hands and look happy and not detached, and people smile at babies in the grocery store. Where in the quiet approaching spring dusk, couples walk in the park, owners exercise their dogs, and children shriek and try to balance on the wooden beam under the heavily delicate lilac tree. Yet I still cry, sometimes, selfishly, for what I lack and for what I have lost, and other times because it is all truly beautiful and fleeting and touchingly innocent – and because I am, ever-changing, still learning, always loving. Nothing may be permanent, but love is forever.