Spring Loaded

every day is a special occassion

Your AI-free reminder that you can find or create joy while also feeling fear, rage, despair, and other prickly crap.

Ceramic sculpture by Germans de Fang, Xavier y Joan Gardy Artigas

There should be a word for the silky feeling of belonging and homecoming on that first spring morning you walk outside with naked arms, no sweater or puffy coat running interference between your body and the world. Your cheeks don’t sting from the icy slap of frigid air. No, this air smells like possibility and the sweet morning breath of vegetation waking herself after a sleepy winter.

This feeling is uniquely alive and possible, ubiquitously human — and yet it remains unnamed.

Everything that comes after is a slow progression which mostly goes unnoticed: the steady shifting away from gray and brown towards yellow and green; branches silently dotting themselves with buds who unfurl into leaves, grass losing the crunch of cold death as it nurses on its own chlorophyll. And oh, the blossoms. This quiet transformation meanders through the weeks until one day you behold that winter is truly in the past and remark that the world has come soft and alive again and how had you not noticed?

But the first day without a coat, oh how delicious to just walk outside and be, without the need for additional layers of protection. It’s tingling, but not in a cold way. It’s better than freshly shaved legs on clean sheet day.

These first days of spring are a joyful memento mori that shit dies and shit comes back to life, a seasonal reminder that nothing stays the same and nothing stays forever.

These first days of spring mark three months from the onset of winter, which ushered in the holiday frenzies of buying and gifting. And hopefully making and sharing? All of the lovelies and yummies that made their way into your home: what is their status?

Have you busted them out of their cellophane wrapping? Have you tasted of their pleasures? Have you slathered your skin with the silky lavender lotion or sipped the smoky wisps of whisky?

If not, why?

Do they sit, waiting for….?

Are you eating your Samoas, and Thin Mints or tucking them in the back of a cabinet so future you can nibble sad, stale cookies?

This is your semi-annual reminder to use your good shit. The fancy glasses. Your gran’s China. The good olive oil. A lovely purse. Those sparkly shoes. That cool notebook. The special jam.

Use. It. The. Fuck. Up.

If you’re saving these things for a special occasion, ask yourself: isn’t being alive (on this rock hurtling through space) and in possession of a three-pound lump of brain-meat charged with electrical impulses allowing you to perceive beauty and preciousness, isn’t that a special enough occasion?

What else is there?

see you in a few days

I’m always open to ideas, suggestions, shenanigans, tomfoolery, collaborations, cheese, snacks, and field trips.

You can find my art here and here. I offer custom workshops and design. I am the proud guardian/custodian of a 17 year old cheeseburger named Patty.

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All photographs and art are by me, Rubi McGrory, unless otherwise noted.

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words and images © Rubi McGrory 2021-2025