pringtime in Utah is marvelously chaotic. Yesterday at lunchtime it was 80-some-odd degrees and brilliantly sunshiney. Come evening, I was driving home from the train station with the top down, a strong wind buffetting the ‘stang, and turbulent swirls of charcoal-colored clouds sweeping across the Wasatch Mountains in the east. This morning, the temperature is in the 40s, it’s been raining sporadically since late last night, and the sky looks like a fresh bruise.

Normally, I love this variability — I find it exciting, and most of the time I actually like the rain. It reminds me of England. But this morning, it’s kind of bumming me out, and, oddly enough, I think it’s for the exact same reason I usually like it: it reminds me of England. It’s been almost 14 years since my big landmark month-long adventure there; I can’t believe so much time has passed, or how quickly it’s seemed to go. Back then, I really believed I would’ve returned by now, and that I would’ve gone lots of other places, too. I’ve crossed a few destinations off my list in the years since then, but not nearly as many as I once imagined I would.

I’m feeling melancholy today, I guess, and nostalgic and rambling and self-indulgent. In other words, all those things that define Simple Tricks and Nonsense. I probably shouldn’t be boring my Three Loyal Readers with this whiny crap, and I apologize to you for doing it, but this is what’s on my mind: things I thought I’d do by this point in my life and things I haven’t yet done. Of course, it probably doesn’t help my mood that I’ve started reading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, a book that’s positively obsessed with death and time and finding a way to look back at things without turning to stone (if you haven’t read it, trust me, that all makes sense in context). I find myself thinking of a song by Rush that I used to like, “Time Stand Still”:

I turn my back to the wind
To catch my breath
Before I start off again.
Driven on without a moment to spend
To pass an evening with a drink and a friend
I let my skin get too thin
I’d like to pause
No matter what I pretend
Like some pilgrim
Who learns to transcend
Learns to live as if each step was the end
(Time stand still)
I’m not looking back
But I want to look around me now
(Time stand still)
See more of the people and the places that surround me now
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away
I turn my face to the sun
Close my eyes
Let my defences down
All those wounds that I can’t get unwound
I let my past go too fast
No time to pause
If I could slow it all down
Like some captain, whose ship runs aground
I can wait until the tide comes around
(Time stand still)
I’m not looking back
But I want to look around me now
(Time stand still)
See more of the people and the places that surround me now
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each impression a little bit stronger
Freeze this motion a little bit longer
The innocence slips away
The innocence slips away…
Summer’s going fast, nights growing colder
Children growing up, old friends growing older
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each impression a little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away…
The innocence slips away

God, it just occurred to me that that song is now 20 years old. That’s just the cherry on top, isn’t it?