On: The Nights are Just as Long

It is the first official day of spring. Since I live in the south spring has been brushing its hand over my shoulders on-and-off since early February. I am developing a tan from my walks in the evening sun, my raincoat has not been hung up in several days, and I've seen the horizon shimmer over the pavement several times already this year. Spring has been here, but today marks the end of our obligation to bring up global warming when we mention the nice weather outside.

Some "fun" facts: At first, this season was simply called "Lent" (a term that was later co-opted by Christians for their holiday), but in the late 1300's the term was replaced with "the springing time". The etymology speaks for itself from there. The word "season" came from the French word "seison" meaning to "sow", because that is what seasons were about-- planting and harvesting.

Here, the words were a simple marker of time. Seasons, especially spring and autumn, were a thing of the earth and not of the heavens. They were the immediate and the incendiary, the things that made us act and brought new trials into our lives. They were not beyond are small selves, they were what dictated our lives. Have we lost that, though? We attribute misfortune and bad moods to winter. Endings and loss fit seamlessly into autumn. Young and wild romance comes with the summer. When these events or feelings bisect with their proper season, our lives seem like something from a movie, if only for a second. We walk home from a breakup in the rain, or kiss under the July sky, and our lives seem like part of something bigger despite the fact that these ideas about the seasons are very small.

We now know that spring is a part of something larger than this large earth and what it means for us. Seasons, these markers of time, are ultimately ripples from a wave that is far away from us in the scale of its workings. They are small things in this scheme of everything, and our inflated perception of them is more due to our deflated perception of time. Today we stand on an approximately balanced solar terminator (yes, that is an actual term), the edge of day and night. Today we dream of drawn out days of sun and breeze and whatever our idea of paradise might be. We look forward to growth and change and nurturing what's most precious in this world.

And of course, change never stops. You know this. I know this. It doesn't rest through the winter or ferment under piles of leaves in the autumn. Now is not necessarily the time when you will see your New Years' Resolutions start coming true and it is not necessarily the time where someone will slip their hand into your own for the very first time.

But, then again, maybe it will be. Maybe you will have a movie moment this spring, because if there is any season for that it's this one.