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REAL NEWS

Enough. I'm going on a news fast, and instead watch and listen to the Real News, from the earth and the sky and the season. Here on the blue sky mountain the air is charged with the open-armed excitement of Spring; the plants know something big is coming; they can feel it, they are it as the perfume of life rises from the earth: their limbs are springy and vibrant in the softening wind, each node a swelling pink as on the peach and cherry trees, or white as on the plum; the slender apricot limbs are dotted along their lengths with tiny crackled garnets that glow in the morning sun; the weeping cherry is covered with tiny green brushes that paint the shape of the wind; even the cloudy mounds of pruned cherry tree limbs are swelling with the excitement, and soon we'll have piles and piles of blossoms lying there fulfilling the honor of the occasion. Ready to do my small part, I stand before the softening garden earth, pondering seeds.