The more I try to live in the present, the more I begin to appreciate the changing of the seasons. I try not to wish the seasons away, although it’s harder to do so with summer and winter. However, time is relentless, and whether or not I wish away the time it eventually passes. We are coming upon the vernal equinox — a term that I remember committing to memory because it sounded so important.
In class (a long time ago) we learned about the two solstices and the equinoxes, and I thought it was interesting that all of the labels used the english terms for the seasons, yet for some reason the spring event had a different word. The origin of the word is, you guessed it, Latin, and it also means “vigorous and fresh.” I’m ready for a bit more vigor in my days, for more long walks and less obtrusive layers. On Tuesday, March 19, the only day of finals week that I don’t have an exam or paper due, it’ll be spring. We’re getting a taste of it now as the temperatures rise to 50 or 60 degrees F when it rains, and I’m trying to absorb as much of it as I can.
As I excitedly anticipate spring, I thought it would be fun to put together a bunch of quotes or excerpts from writers I like that discuss the coming of spring. It’ll be a bit like my plagiarized fiction, although it won’t be tied together so eloquently. I also wanted to add some nice pieces of art that went along with spring (it’s mostly impressionism, which for some reason often reminds me of spring). It’s just a weave of different words I enjoyed reading. Without further ado:
“On the shore, at a point so close to the ocean that one might imagine it was there the waves broke, stood a row of over twenty fairly tall cherry trees with coal-black trunks. Every April … these trees would display their dazzling blossoms and their most brown leaves against the blue of the sea. Soon a snowstorm of blossoms would scatter innumerable petals into the water, flecking the surface with points of white which the waves carried back to the shore.”
—No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
“What will they taste of, the Christmas roses? The bees are flying. They taste the spring.”
—Wintering, Sylvia Plath
“I looked on top of a city lonely as a god, losing the roots to myself. But this spring I am reunited with the trees as they fill my window’s view.”
—my journal
“Spring opens like a blade.”
—The Glass Essay, Anne Carson (taken from a webweave)
“All morning it has been raining. In the language of the garden, this is happiness”
—Mary Oliver
“March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.”
—V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (taken from a webweave)
“although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness.”
—Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
“Then, for a while, there came over her face a repose which was like spring after the blasts of March. I thought at the time that it was the softness of the red sunset on her face,”
—Dracula, Bram Stoker
"Star and coronal and bell
April underfoot renews,
And the hope of man as well
Flowers among the morning dews
Now the old come out to look,
Winter past and winter's pain,
How the sky in pool and brook
Glitters on the grassy plains."— “Spring Morning” A.E. Housman
"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."
— “Song on May Morning” John Milton
“What use is Spring, then, if it does not bring joy to the dead, and if it does not restore life and the bloom of oblivion after life?”
—Mahmoud Darwish
Hope you liked this style of post! I’ve been trying a lot of new things to see what fits, and this was really fun to write. Some quotes I took from online, but I got a lot of the excerpts from the books I own and a notebook I use to write down quotes that I especially like. Maybe I’ll do a post like this for each season or something. Let me know if there’s any other subjects you’d want me to talk about, either with more analysis or compiling quotes like this.
Until next time,
-emily
This is maybe an oversimplification but I am excited to not feel as confined to the walls of my house by the weather. There are a lot of positive associations I have with spring, but always I find myself ready to escape and I feel these sentiments are perfectly representative!!
Spring is a great time of year. I did like this style of writing!