journal features

spring is for songbirds

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2011.03.22

One of the beauties of Toronto's late-starting Spring is the return of the song-birds.

On the weekend I spotted a robin while taking Kenny out for a stroll down the boardwalk. Then this morning in the pre-dawn gloom I heard some birds and went back to the bedroom to open the window a crack so that Mari could hear the bird song. It's not something you typically hear in either Tokyo or Miyazaki, where she grew up. She seemed well pleased with the sounds. Of course, it's going to snow tonight and tomorrow, but apparently the robins will tough it out just fine.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner