I openly admit the winter of 2010/11 was a rough one - I ended up in the ditch outside of work one morning, hitting a patch of ice and sliding into the embankment, but that's another story - but I'm strangely sad to see it go.
No... I shouldn't say 'strange'... this is normal for me, this different kind of melancholy watching the snowy days recede.
Many people look forward to spring and summer. There is the burst of blooming colours - barren trees beautifully sprinkled with white and pink blossoms - along with the eagerness and energy to meet the longer days, to walk over the green grass, to see the bare arms and legs of strollers pass, pale but tanning in the sunshine.
Spring and summer are certainly wondrous seasons. Life re-emerges, almost miraculous from the cocoon first laid by autumn leaves and the subsequent quiet walls of winter. People can't wait to get into their gardens - my mother included. People can't wait for the beach, kids can't wait for the summer holidays - so much 'can't wait, can't wait' as so many are looking forward to summer sports. Hockey dads are active in winter, what would summer moms do without soccer? There is a certain raison d'etre, I'm sure, involved in little league games, in carting around swarms of tiny sports enthusiasts, their bodies buzzing with sugar and enthusiasm.
But for me, I have no kids, so there's no responsibility there. I don't have a garden - though I would like to someday (but that's a kind of lie I want to believe in). I'm also not a sports enthusiast. I could care less about beach volley ball. I like watching soccer on television with my father because he has an excellent memory for players, team stats that bring a new dimension to the game.
Overall, I'm an introvert and though I work in an environment where I showcase extrovert tendencies (I'm a tour guide at a winery, a rather entertaining one on a good day) I prefer Fall and Winter because the seasons suggest a time of solace for my inner sensibilities.
And that's just it Spring and Summer are about opening up, sharing, showing, revealing which extroverted people tend to do by being exuberant and social in large gatherings. These latter two seasons are by 'nature' (and no pun intended) gregarious. People sit on patios in the summer, the crowds come and go under sunny skies. Though people read at the beach, they are not slugging around battered copies of War and Peace. We have beach books because people want something mindless to read while they are mindlessly sunbathing. It's just the way it works.
Spring and Summer are times when everything comes to the surface after resting in the chthonic layers of Fall and Winter. As the grass becomes greener and the April rainfall falls away revealing bluer skies, I have to ask myself, like the German poet, Friedrich Hölderlin, in his famous poem, Abendfantasie (Evening Fantasy) Wohin denn ich? Where then do I go?
In the poem, the poet looks around him. The ploughman sits peacefully after a day of hard work. Sailors are welcomed into town by the church bells. Friends and family have places to go, people gather in the market, in their homes. Where is the poet meant to be, distant, alone, far from the crowd?
I relate to Hölderlin because I have been asking myself that very question even before I read his poem in my early twenties. I have been asking that question every April.
In Fall and Winter, solitude is acceptable. We as human beings pull away from a world that is no longer warm or hospitable. The days are shorter and evening's darkness haunts our drives home, our dinner hours. Fall and Winter - the time when students are busy pouring over their books, when War and Peace must come out and be tackled for lack of anything better to read. It's hard to read something cheery and flighty when it isn't cheery outside.
Winter especially... that feeling of waking up, the chill, the longing to stay in bed but then, just through the windows, the scintillating but sullen blue of snowy mornings waiting to be breathed in. The scent of chilled cheeks, that blustery redness like a blush, so beautiful on the faces of pretty girls. Winter, with the hypnotic drone of windshield wipers and that sense we are living somewhere between a half-forgotten memory and a sleep-laden reality. Snow heavy on the lids of windows sills, snow on the roofs of churches. The world of Winter telling us to dream and wonder, even if the bare branches appear slightly nightmarish like bones torn from their flesh.
Now here comes Spring and Summer and a part of me is asking myself, what now? How am I going to act and relate to people who, by reading the above paragraph would consider me a candidate for anti-depressants. I don't care for the beach. I like patios but it's not going to be the death of me if I don't get to one right away.
Wohin denn ich? I feel a little naked about this time, threatened (yes, 'threatened') by the warmer days because I know my solitude shows up, is readily seen. Though I like being social, I've never been that party guy, that social guy that knows everybody. And I've gotten to that point where I just don't care if I'll ever get a girlfriend... (yes, probably my problem right, this guy needs to lighten up...)
I suppose it really comes down to that feeling that Spring and Summer also represent things I would like but because of my predisposition, my biography, I'll never really have. There's a part of me that wishes I could lie on a beach and do nothing but read bestseller novels or spend an entire day drinking beer on a patio, listening to a band. But that's just it, I would feel I'm wasting time. And I'm not saying others are wasting time, it's just that's what they want and need. The way that the cool kids needed to hang around in circles on the play ground and do nothing but give you, you the outsider, the impression they had something going on. That longing to be the cool kid still resonates in me but it's so badly misplaced I have to shake my head. The cool kids are really the most boring people in my mind but what I'm not equally fascinates me for the fact I can't be it and if I tried, I'd deny what makes me unique.
And I've often wondered what I will be in the person, the being that will have someone. In my own fantasies of love and relationships, I don't see the person I am but this 'other' who goes to the beach, is social, has a large group of friends, etc... But he isn't real, there is no grounding to his life, the way a fantasy is merely a cultivated counterpoint to balance with our daily lives.
Spring and Summer represent 'the other' I'll never know, this counterpoint. The person I could be if I loved these two seasons wouldn't be the person writing this. You won't find me on a beach with a volley ball. I prefer a beach when the leaves are falling, when tanned steroid strutters are no where to be seen eye-balling a set of bimbos.
The poet in his Evening Fantasy looks further, up to the purple clouds where there is a Spring blooming - his Spring being a peace, a haven. He asks himself, why is the sting of restlessness always effecting him.
I know it affects me. I'd rather be doing something than not. Fall and Winter help motivate me, Spring and Summer are all about indulgence, superficiality, reminding me of People magazine and Cosmopolitan covers with bikini-clad celebrities - people offering us only the vacuity of entertainment. That is Spring and Summer for me. It's life in North American society which has yet to appreciate the deeper and finer things because it has yet to cultivate them.
In the main and to best summarize: Summer for me is what Winter is like for the extroverted ones, 'the others'. I suppose I have to accept this. They got through the Winter, it's my turn to get through the Summer.
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