Spring is beginning to move forward by leaps and bounds; that’s not exactly a “spring forward” joke, because Arizona doesn’t do Daylight Savings Time, but take it for what you will. The weather here is a wild ride lately, spinning between 80-degree days and cold wind and rain, which is to say it’s fairly spring-like, but for us, it’s a lot. I am still, in mid-March, worried about a possible frost tonight; what even is life? What is the desert?

Soon it will be April, and it’ll be my birthday. Soon it’ll be May, and I’ll be at a residency. Then in July, I’ll be teaching at a low-residency MFA program for the first time. I’m looking forward to all of this, but it’s also hurtling towards me in way it didn’t seem to be a couple of short weeks ago.

I have reached new shores, you might say, but the way is still difficult.

In the name of finding some peace of mind, then, here are a few things I’ve really enjoyed lately, because you gotta hold on to what you’ve got:

• The Heavens, a novel by Sandra Newman
• Captain Marvel !!!!! which I think is not getting the cred it deserves. Just go see it! Let yourself have innocent fun, you monsters!
• The Collected Schizophrenias, by Esmé Weijun Wang
• I’ve been reading Jung for the first time, because, idk, innocent fun?

I enjoy other things too, of course, like nice sweatshirts, and my husband and dog, but those are not particularly shareable experiences. If you can, however, I do recommend seeing desert flowers in springtime. They come up in unexpected places, they do not last forever, but they take over the dry world for a short time and change it completely.