spring's eternal hope
spring's eternal hope
on rebirth, rejuvenation, and renewal; on seasonality; on grass so green it's almost blue
I sit in my chair - an Ikea Poäng rocker that refuses to die despite multiple moves and at least a decade of days of my rear sitting in it, reading and writing as the sun comes up or retires for the evening - with the vernal equinox approaching a month in the rearview. The weather is starting its turn towards truly spring-like after the first few false starts were met with sub-freezing temperatures in a zig-zag. It is nearing 9:30pm ET and the sun crept West below the horizon two hours ago.
I initially set out to write this piece ahead of spring as a way to remind you1, dear reader2 of the beauty that is rebirth, rejuvenation and renewal, of change being a good thing and being the only constant, and how that is bullshit. There’s death, taxes, craving, and others.
On rebirth I would have said that the first signs of life in the spring bring me equal parts joy and melancholia - joy for the colors that away as the flowers and trees come alive; melancholia for the loss of the excuse to build and stoke yet another fire. I would talk more about how I (stupidly) set a goal to build my age in fires during the winter (43) like I did for reading books, only to stop after 15 - fires not books, as I've read 25 so far3 already this year.
On rejuvenation, I would have talked about the additional Vitamin D beginning to work its magic, the longer days greeting my early mornings with less time in the dark spending time on myself - exercising, reading, writing now and then - and leaving my evenings with less time in the dark to spend time with my family - dinner, television, reading, listening to my oldest daughter sing as she gets ready for bed. I would have talked about the return of the wild garlic - ramps to many of you - in the patches of woods in the walking trails by our house, about how my wife went to pick them today, found a carcass in the woods - a deer most likely - and on my return home finding her cleaning an overflowing colander’s worth, the olfactory sensation - equal parts wildly forested and garlick-ly pungent - hitting me before laying eyes on the foraged bounty. I would have made the case that the carcass my wife found was its own form of renewal, providing the ground with a natural fertilizer, providing the scavengers with life and sustenance; I would counter this with the renewal still needed as the forrest was littered with garbage and filth left by our fellow man and woman. I would have talked about going to my youngest daughter's Spring Fest at school, and how she won one of the raffles, the excitement flowing through her like the run off from some April showers.
On renewal, I would have talked about the times in the year when we look to the calendar for a chance to start fresh: on birthdays, on New Years; in September when the kids go back to school and our friends bring in their new year during Rosh Hashanah; on the first of every month giving us each 12 chances to get it right; during the New Moon which happens 13 not 12 giving us an additional one; when the new quarter at school allows my daughter to start anew after struggling4 to complete her assignments the prior quarter; when the first trees begin the bud in late March or early April depending on the temperature. I would have likely included a reference to the legend of the Phoenix, about rising from the ashes, from the depths, to begin again.
I would have referenced songs with lyrics that applied directly to the extended days - like The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun, as much as it would pain me to do - and lyrics that were a stretch - like Death Cab's New Year, making the case that Spring is like a new year - "so this is the new year, and I don't feel any different", when I really did, like how I felt on this Sunday morning's run along the Bronx River, when everyone and everything seemed different, so alive, so full, like a rebirth, bringing the essay back to where it started before moving onto the next topic.
On seasonality, I would have talked about the literal changing of the seasons from Spring to Summer to Autumn to Winter and back to Spring again; about the need for periods of growth followed by periods of rest so that one may grow again. I would have talked about how bears hibernate in winter and lose 30-40% of its weight in the process; I would have compared that to how I hibernated more this past winter than usual and put on an additional 10% of my prior bodyweight. I would have talked bout the seasonality of the markets, about how even when you take out the stock market crashes, October is a terrible month for markets. I probably would have made a reference to the musical Rent, which debuted 28 years ago next Monday, about the song Seasons of Love, about how there are five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes in a year; about how we go through seasons of love and lust and loathing and loss; I would have made a reference to the Office spoofing Rent on Michael's last day.
I would have talked about my favorite season, how it's changed through the years: how when I was a kid I loved winter (see: snow); how I also loved fall (see: New England); how I was fortunate to lifeguard in the summer; how spring is a season I look forward to now that I'm older as it shows that even through the decay and death of winter we can emerge stronger. Another ring on the tree, more blossoms than last year, a fruiting cherry tree bearing fruit for the first time. Another ring - a smaller one (I've lost weight since) - representing 14 years of marriage, technically a winter marriage (March 12) and a spring wedding (April 3), still on my finger (though not recently as I've put a bit of the weight back on as mentioned just a few lines above).
On grass so green it is practically blue, I'd talk about how I sat in my front yard last Spring - after a soaking April's worth of rain - and commented to myself that my grass was moving a shade to the right on the ROYGBIV scale (it should be noted we do not live in Kentucky nor is this the blue grass of its state nickname). I would attempt to make an analogy to something unrelated in a [blank 1] so [blank 2] it is practically [blank 3] kind of way. It wouldn't make sense, but then again, maybe it would.
The essay would be an attempt to instill hope. That at the margins we shift into another shade, another level, another phase: of color, of capacity, of growth, of hope. There is a phrase we utter: hope springs eternal. What we have upon, around and within us is spring's eternal hope.
Ben Folds, as he did this week fighting through bronchitis at the Tarrytown Music Hall, sings in Still Fighting It of sunny days and rain. He sings about his son, but it could easily be about my daughters. He ends the song apologizing: and you're so much like me, I'm sorry. This morning's sun has given way to rain. But it's not the positive hope for the sun to return: Spring's eternal hope is that things do change. It's acknowledging - no, that word is overused, and in this case, it's misused - as it's not that we stake any claim on what we see, or what we experience, or what we've won or what we've lost. It's simply observing the changes and progression of life.
The buddhists talk of detachment. Of simply being. And it is through detachment that we reach enlightment. I'm not sure if that's completely accurate - not whether the philosophy is true or not but whether that is their philosophy. But sticking with it, this is what I mean by observation in the above paragraph. It's not placing status or station or stimulus on the changes we observe, it’s simply being with the changes.
Karl Ove Knausgaard in his book Spring,5 a 182-page letter to his newborn daughter about life, love and madness, writes:
[For] that is April: buds, shoots, uncertainty, hesitation. April lies between the great sleep and the great leap. April is the longing for something else, where the object of longing is still unknown.
I think about the young Magnolia trees in our backyard, how they start to show their flowers before their leaves; how one gets more light the other and how that may impact how quickly they blossom. I think about the Magnolia trees up the street, how they're older - bigger - than our trees. I think about how they don’t hesitate to show their flowers off earlier than ours. I wonder if that's an evolutionary trait, about adaptability. That the older the tree gets, the faster it needs to show itself to bring on the pollinators to take its pollen from the stamen and place it in another tree's pistil.
I think about getting older myself, the need to make decisions faster to keep up with my expanding responsibilities, the feeling that I'm running out of time, that I need to share what I know, to pollinate the minds of those around me with my thoughts, and my experiences. I question whether that's not it at all, that the trees up the street are simply getting more light so they grow faster. I think about whether light - sunlight specifically - is responsible for those Magnolia trees growth and how that relates to my own growth. How light provides visibility and how growth happens when we step out of the shadows and into center stage and step forward into the spotlight.
Before the epilogue, Knausgaard concludes the main text:
When I bent down over you, tears were running down my cheeks. You smiled as you saw my face approaching, because you didn't know what tears were either.
She observed his face, her sole reference point. She had no context for what tears were. She simply knew love. And she remained in it. He goes on to end the epilogue:
Sometimes it hurts to live, but there is always something to live for.
Could you try to remember that?
Today, I live for spring.
Read: myself.
Read: dear writer.
Including The Power Broker, which is a tome if there ever was one.
Read: Neglecting.
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