March has arrived. The fickle weather pendulum lingers briefly on sunny afternoon before swinging wildly back to January cold and freezing rain. Sometimes spring feels so far away…

One of my wonderful housemates is leaving, forcing the remaining two residents on Henry St. to fill empty shoes with another pair of feet. More than one of my close friends and family members are finding new jobs, quitting old ones and moving forward into uncharted territory. My schedule is filling up with rehearsal times, wedding receptions and other people’s obligations. And in-between all the  planning, I’m forming new relationships while trying to balance life’s most basic questions.

Julie, the housemate who will not be leaving come April 1st, has been privy to much of the change in my life while balancing a plethora of her own challenges and questions. Last week, she gave me incredible solace by quoting a beautiful line from a favorite quote before charging upstairs and rewriting these powerful words from one of Germany’s greatest 20th century poets:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

I hope this helps you, dear reader, during this fascinating and tumultuous time of pre-spring blues. And sleep well knowing that you will fare better than poor Julius Caesar in three days time. Beware the Ides of March. For everything else, there’s cookie butter.