Signs and Portents

When an obfuscated surface becomes the clearest mirror; when I seem to scry a tip of spring pushing through the winter of Chicago's discontent; when friends start sprouting in the strangest places, a phenomenon obeying nothing, save only the Tao; when Birnam Wood, on the march again, comes slam up against a riverbank, writhing through Georgia, while a freak blizzard rages in North Raleigh ... well, then! I guess it's time.