Last week, (or was it now the week before last?) I began reading Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. The chapter on snatching small moments of time in which to write struck home for me. I feel as though I don’t get nearly as much time to write as I would like, and that I can’t write in bits an pieces, 15 mins here and 15 mins there, so I don’t begin at all. Julia makes a strong argument for NOT waiting for the right moment or the long stretch of time – it may never happen – so just get on with it in the time you DO have.
So here I am, 8 am, snatching some time before my painless pump class at 10.40. Let’s see what happens…
I have been wanting to write about spring for some time now. Although technically we are still in winter (being August) I noticed spring began to waft through the days very early in this month. The air had a warmth about it so lacking in the past season, the icy edge removed and a softness returning with the sun’s strengthening heat. The hint of summer bite that tells you the UV index is through the roof. I have been longing for the warm sunny days when the trees will begin to blossom and the garden fills with bees. I can begin to wear fewer layers of clothing and there will be less need for the fire to go all day.
But spring is also a season of tease, giving insight to the summer coming whilst compelling you to remember the season just now making a slow exit. Frost. Today is the fifth morning I have woken to frost covering all outside surfaces, the hard crackle of stiff grass underfoot, the below zero chill in the air. This is the closest we ever get to snow and it seems magical, other worldly, so fleeting but leaving behind a trail of destruction if you have been foolish enough to plant tender seedlings or trees too early. Lulled into a false sense of security by that first week of placid warm weather – here one day, retreating the next and you are left standing in nothing but a negligee with the Arctic wind whipping around your ankles.
I am wary of spring’s roaring winds and must protect my neck from wind invasion at all times but I also love them for they sweep through and clear the last vestiges of winter stagnation, creating a path for the new season, stirring new life, rousing it from post-winter dormancy. These gusts can be exhilarating: full of latent energy, the power of rebirth and awakening. They are not an event you can ignore. These winds feel like the kinesthetic equivalent of rustling energetically through great piles of autumn leaves or splashing vigorously through large winter puddles. In spring you can just stand out in the open air and let yourself be buffeted this way and that while nature takes full control.
Spring is both rough and smooth, cold snaps and wintery storms are not a stranger to this season, yet we are offered also a sneak preview of what to expect from summer, a little pre-emptive taste, just a morsel.
I wonder if people can miss spring, simply by focusing on the winter just gone, and how they so much want it to be over; or the summer to come and how they so much want it to fully arrive. But to do this would be to miss an opportunity to see nature at her most raw, bare bones chaos, neither here nor there, this nor that, promising nothing, offering all possibilities, showing us the duality of rebirth. The gentle and the violent in the same breath.
Usually, after what is more like 6 months of winter here, I can’t wait for summer. But this year I am all tuned into spring and I’m not going to miss a moment. I can see it peeking out from behind the curtain and I’ve got it under close surveillance. And I’m up for whatever it has on offer.
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