Springtime Ennui

Note to self: remember not to try to talk to your guy friends about that "spring fever"/"urge to merge" in terms of the little birds gathering twigs for their nests and doing their little mating dances. After rebuffing a few Brokeback epithets, I gave up trying to articulate that thing, whatever it is, and saved face by passing it off as some joke. (not really, but kinda)

See, the way I figure, we're not so very far removed from the animals in some respects and this is one of them. I suspect that for us single guys--for me, in any event--this thing is cyclical. Maybe not just for the single guys either, but I don't know. I'll get busy with some project or another and go months without giving it much thought. Then, all of a sudden...well, what can I say---you start to see the no-knee birds* picking up twigs and bits of fluff and all bets are off!

And it's not exactly a sexual thing either. That's why I called it a thing. It's bigger than that. It's a feeling of unrest, uneasiness, can't sit still-ness. I think the French have a good word for it--ennui. So it's not about sex, but I have to admit it's inseparable from it too. I just chalk it up to that God-given instinct to join up with someone and populate the world! No doubt about it, it's an instinct. Here's an irony, though: it's a vague, difficult to articulate feeling, sometimes cyclical and subtle, yet as an instinct it's as persistent and even urgent as some of the other functions we associate with that word.

OK, so that's spring fever in the abstract. How does it apply to me? What am I doing about it? After all, I did say it could be urgent at times. Well...I'm exercising one of those things that does separate us from the animals--patience and self-control. Mind you, I haven't always been a paragon of virtue in this respect, but I've managed. And I'll continue to manage. It's really not so bad. It's just that while I'm quite content to be single for a season, neither can I ignore what I'll euphemistically call springtime ennui. It's there in the background, where I try to keep it.

* "No-knee" birds are those common little brown finches you see all over this country. They were given this moniker by my sister because they hop along on the ground without bending their knees as if they had none.