wtfdto: Love is back!!!

Hello and happy spring to all of you! I know it is on for real now. I’ve put away the heavy blankets and thrown open the windows. Now I can hear everything going on within a two-block radius and those weird flies that kind of just hang out are back to test my mid-air snatching skills. All the sparrows and swallows that live in the bricks of my apartment building are extra busy, chirping away on my kitchen windowsill every morning just after sunrise. I love it all, from the fragrant flowers to the flagrant vagrants.

The farmer’s almanac has all manner of information regarding the springtime but it falls short when searching for the season under urban conditions. There are many signs of springtime to look for here in the city, such as; apron topped hippy girls, shirtless packs of roaming gutter punks, the alabaster/salamander look of white people exposed anew to the sun, louder music, better parties, more contact with strangers, drunken baseball fans, urban farmers with dirty boots and shorts on, a general tossing off of clothing layers, park bbq’s, you can lay off your meds, there is more money, the Maui onions are back and so is asparagus.

The one sure sign that trumps all is when somebody has the heart to write, in giant magenta letters, on the biggest, cleanest and whitest walls in Oakland, “Share the love! Love is back!” Amen. The bare white, boring, walls of the 601 city center barricades have never looked better or more cheerful.

Bless this soul and the crew that helped. The loving words went up Friday night––I think––and made it all the way through Mother’s day, only to succumb to the giant fuzzy roller of white paint on Monday morning. What is wrong with “love is back”? I saw a car full of total mom’s, on mother’s day, pull up to the traffic light at MLK and 11th, and every one of them was smiling and pointing at the message. Now it is back to blank. I don’t get it. They could have at least let it go a few more days… when the wall said, “fuck you, Alyssa”, it was up for almost a week.

It might be gone but I am not going to forget it, and don’t you all either, LOVE IS BACK!!!!

See you later this week! Salut!