....that men still call Tyre...

Such a beautiful Sunday morning!  Warm and soft, with a pretty steady breeze, and occasional flurries of tiny drops.  I've been turning my windshield wipers off and on all morning.  The sky is palest grey and looks like a fresh duvet.  I'm looking at the grass through the library window, and it is vivid green -- partly because it is new growth, and partly because this is the perfect weather to see colors in. 

Many of the trees have tiny brilliant green leaves, and those that don't have pink and white and lavender blossoms.  Even the deep forest green of the conifer trees looks brighter and greener -- less Grimm-fairy-tale-forest, more men's-club-smoking-lounge.

This morning before my shift started, I was reading a travel book by Lawrence Durrell (note to self: read Gerald Durrell, not Lawrence!) and getting melancholy as it talked knowledgeably and casually about all the places I have never been, in a time, when all you needed to travel was some cash and the desire to go -- if you wanted to live in Greece, you just went there and rented a house.  Sigh... 

Anyway, I was trying to convince myself that I should be glad those who had traveled had written about it, so those of us (me) who had been too cowardly and procrastinatory (I've just made that word up) and generally frozen, could experience it vicariously, after a fashion.  Instead, I set the book down, and decided not to read any further about the "old ships (which) sail like swans asleep/Beyond the village which men still call Tyre/ With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep/ For Famagusta and the hidden sun that rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire."

That poem has always made me long for something -- something.

Ah, well!  I will make a physical effort and wrench my mind back to the happy state I was enjoying just moments ago!  Green, grey, soft warm air!  Sunday morning in Portland in the gentle rain!