I suppose my last post sounded sad; I was contemplating how spring is almost a memory even as it is happening. The flowers will die, the delicate elusive colors will darken and coarsen.
I hope she won’t mind, but I was moved by a comment from a friend:
“Your awareness of the ephemeral nature of the seasons is not unlike the Japanese sensibility. It is a double edged sword – a gift and a curse.”
That expresses my sad feelings, so I hope these pictures illustrate the optimistic aspect of the progress of spring.
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Tess, you remind me of A. E. Houseman’s “Loviest of trees, the cherry now…”, from A Shropshire Lad. All about the ephemeral nature of spring and life. Not very Japanese, I think, but no less lovely.
Indeed. No less lovely in referring to the yearly cycle of the seasons, and the limit to the number seasons each of us can see—a contemplation of beauty marking our mortality…
Here is the poem:
A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.
II. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten, 5
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room, 10
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
But this, looking another way, is how ephemeral each moment of a perpetual cycle leaves us with a sense of being left behind.
A LIGHT exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here
A color stands abroad 5
On solitary hills
That silence cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.
It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree 10
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.
Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound, 15
It passes, and we stay:
A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.
——Emily Dickinson
Beautiful pictures Tess! Here the spring is by far the most beautiful season;already nature flowers are drying up as the dry season has started.
Sorry to hear about your Father’s Alzheimer.
Hello Yaelian
Thank you for your sympathy about the situation with my dad.
Also:
Thank you for saying that you think my pictures are beautiful. I am truly an amateur but I think they are pretty…
Spring is a very beautiful season here in Michigan as well.
I was reading about Persephone a month or 6 weeks, ago and I began thinking about the meanings of how seasons are different depending on where one lives in the world.
For me, the seasons are warm or cold. But there are other places where seasons are wet or dry.
I’d wonder, with your Finnish connections, do you know about “pasties?” I think not?In my next post I tell a little about them and my fathers enjoying them.