Begin afresh, afresh, afresh

[j4]

Psimont may complain about the weather, but I think it's beautiful; it's nothing like summer, it's pure spring. The air is still fresh, still shivery in the shade; and the light still has that raw edge of winter sun, low rays shining through the trees, pouring dappled light on to the dewy grass.

For me, spring is full of promise, of new life, of reaching out and grasping at every burst of light, every bud, every unfurling leaf. Summer, by contrast, is lethargic and slow; the summer sun weighs heavy on even the brightest flowers, and the summer air is cloying, oppressive, thick with decadence and disappointment. Summer promises everything and fails to deliver; but with Spring every sunbeam is an unexpected gift, every snowdrop is a diamond in the dirt, every moment of warmth is a swift and fierce embrace from a new love.

So why does light through new leaves bring tears to my eyes? Because the beginning is always the beginning of the end, the wheel always turns. No matter how free and clear the air feels, no matter how the sun sparkles on the river or shines on budding romances; no matter how lightly the hours pass, still they pass.

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

-- Philip Larkin

* * *

'I'm rising five,' he said,
'Not four,' and little coils of hair
Unclicked themselves upon his head.
His spectacles, brimful of eyes to stare
At me and the meadow, reflected cones of light
Above his toffee buckled cheeks. He'd been alive
Fifty-six months or perhaps a week more: not four,
But rising five.
Around him in the field the cells of spring
Bubbled and doubled; buds unbuttoned; shoot
And stem shook out the creases from their frills,
And every tree was swilled with green.
It was the season after blossoming,
Before the forming of the fruit: not May,
But rising June.

And in the sky
The dusk dissected the tangential light:
not day,
But rising night;
not now,
But rising soon.

The new buds push the old leaves from the bough.
We drop our youth behind us like a boy
Throwing away his toffee wrappers. We never see the flower,
But only the fruit in the flower; never the fruit,
But only the rot in the fruit. We look for the marriage bed
In the baby's cradle, we look for the grave in the bed: not living,
But rising dead.

-- Norman Nicholson

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

For me, however, the start of the year is in the Autumn

Spot the person who's still close to the world of academia... :)

Autumn has a related but different feeling, for me. It's a darker beginning, more melancholy; more heavy, less fragile than Spring. I still think in terms of (no pun intended) the academic year too, and there's always the tension of that year beginning and the natural year beginning to end. (And, at the moment, the feeling that I'm beginning another wasted year since I finished my degree.)

For me Autumn will always, somewhere in my mind, be walking down Burton Walks, kicking the fallen leaves with my new school shoes, feeling the nights drawing in. Rows of streetlamps stretching through the gathering dusk into the welcoming dark. Greys and navy blues in the shadows; new faces, old buildings. The comforting weight of tradition settling around our shoulders.

I feel these things as physical sensations. I don't have the right words for the feeling of lights in shop windows in November, or the feeling of the light-lapped shadows between two street lamps. I'm not even sure I have the right language.

Current music: Kristin Hersh, Hips and Makers. [This album is a darkened room in a shared house, in a November that may have happened to somebody else.]

[aendr.livejournal.com]

Spot the person who's still close to the world of academia... :)

Hmm, actually that's not really to do with academia but culture and religion - the new year starts in Autumn in one of the faiths I grew up with. Actually, that faith has two new years - Autumn and Spring, with different beginnings for different purposes. You hit the nail on the head with the darker beginning of Autumn, that's the way I feel too. Either way, Autumn and Spring beginnings make so much more sense to me than mid-winter. Oh and "New Year's resolutions"? Too long a goal - quarterly gives one more chances to start, or finish, or deliberately abandon and allows more frequent reviews - I'm certainly not going to stay the same all year and therefore need the same resolutions/goals throughout the year.

I love Autumn most of the year - especially the leaves on the trees, the glorious colours. I prefer non-green treens at any time, anyway. Copper beach, silver birch, red maple...

This year, both Spring and Autumn will be really significant to me. I start a real job soon - so Spring is a beginning. But Autumn will be an end - my time for my PhD will be up and must have submitted.