A mockingbird is singing outside my window, so it's Spring by my own personal calendar, though a wee bit early by the official one. He's.... A mockingbird is singing outside my window, so it's Spring by my own personal calendar, though a wee bit early by the official one.

He's singing outside my window even though said window is in one of the densest and most urbanized neighborhoods in Los Angeles, the Miracle Mile district. And across the street from me, as I look out another window, I see the bright yellow-green of new leaves on the jacaranda trees that grace the tiny front lawn of my old building, the one where I lived in my "room in the sky." Below my own window are fresh buds poking out of bare branches, and soon the hummingbird will make her stop at the tiny blossoms of the rosemary we keep in pots just outside.

Last night, as I walked between my mother's house in Hollywood and my apartment, I enjoyed a symphony of fragrances as I passed by garden after little garden--roses, jasmine, a hundred flowers sweetening the shadows of twilight, perfumes for the little tables set on porches a mere arm's-reach from the street.

In the distance, the hills made velvet silhouettes against the last light of the sun--silhouettes bejeweled by streetlamps and high windows. Overhead, the first stars shone.

And in the far suburbs, where some friends and relatives still live, people drove into garages and trudged from the garages to their television rooms. I've seen the empty streets, the flicker of blue behind drawn shades. I walk my own streets, passing neighbors who, most of them, own cars but aren't owned by them, out on foot enjoying the first real day of spring, and I wonder who is really closer to nature, after all.