Reluctant Spring

Well, spring broke.  It's broken. A cold April is the worst kind of joke. The other day I texted a friend, "why is spring so reluctant? It's like it doesn't trust itself."   Even spring doesn't really believe it's spring. It's been rainy, snowy, and cold for several days in a row. My birthday is at the end of the month and I know it'll finally figure things out but just about this time every year I remind Sean (and myself, and the universe, who is hopefully listening), "You know, I once had a pool party for my birthday."  A POOL PARTY. Because it was warm enough. So you know, I feel just a little bit wronged when it's mid-April and it can't even manage to make it to the 60's. Grrrrr. I believe in you, spring! You just have to believe in yourself.

That said, this deplorable misbehavior does create some interesting imagery. The grass has begun to grow and is kind of insanely green, from all this precipitation. People have begun mowing lawns and everything. Not us though, and our lawn is a freakin' rain forest right now because I'm still in the mindset of winter, when yardwork becomes an non-word in my vocab. Utterly meaningless.  But it's sooo vibrantly green and with that + the few flowers that have popped up (in other people's yards) + these great snowy mountains standing aloft, it's like a brand new color palette that I am just not used to seeing.  I guess that's what snow in spring always is and it's not the first time it's been this way. Still, it's strange. 

So I'm a little bit transfixed, but mostly just perturbed.  Imagine those two expressions simultaneously on my face.  Actually you don't have to. I tried to see if I could portray both and I think I pulled it off ok.  It was hard though: *

transfixed + perturbed

Well, to inspire spring to come and to remind it of itself, I present that old classic poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay, by my good pal Robert Frost. I've blogged about this before but I am re-posting because it's not just a sad thing, like Julian thinks (he still refuses to listen to it, btw) and it's just so nice. I always thought it was sort of a commentary on beautiful things and how they're fleeting, but I realized it's really a poem about spring:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Spring is not a destination, it’s a thoroughfare. Its transitory essence is like a sunrise. Beautiful, shocking. Gone. It's elusive because it was never meant to last. It’s the earth being re-born and like birth, it’s a beginning--a traumatic, violent celebration trumpeting the song of things to come, but not really of itself. 

Hope always comes into the forefront of my mind at this time of year. It's a tune almost forgotten and one of which we all need reminding. Frost's (his name is extra appropriate now) poem speaks to the tragic impermanence of beauty but lest I forget, it’s also cyclical. It's slow to arrive, dragging its heels,  but when it does, it's repetitively fleeting, a fly-by glimpse of reminders of hope I’ve luckily been witness to before, and (fingers crossed) will again, if it could just remember the song. 



*I've scoured my blog but have found nothing on what I was sure I've mentioned already. It's one of my favorite games I made up with my friend who's an actor. It's called Mixed Emotions and you have someone call out two emotions or expressions, like "nauseous + excited" or "bored + suspicious" and you have to show both of them simultaneously. It's mostly stupid but also very funny watching as you depict one emotion and then another, trying to retain a bit of both.  It's also very challenging. Try it with your friends today!