Back in college we had a long talk in English 101 about the symbolism associated with the natural world. We talked about how the sun is traditionally presented as male, and the earth as female; we talked about the seasons, and how autumn was the season of death and decay and endings, while spring was the season of life, birth, and rebirth...
And I... just... no. No. I realize this places me completely at odds with most of Western Culture™, but that is completely wrong. Autumn is cool and clean, the season when I feel awake and alive and focused. The relentless heat of summer is finally letting go, the nights are getting longer, and I have my energy back.
Spring is the season of death. Spring is the time when I cannot breathe, when I walk around feeling as if someone has driven a nail into my forehead, when - basically - the air itself is trying to kill me.
Western Civilization has it backwards.
I like autumn very much--it has all the benefits of spring, plus Halloween is a holiday season that both me and Western Culture™ can actually agree on--but I think lack of allergies (knock on wood) + autumn only being maybe six weeks long here (last 1.5 weeks of September, all of October, first half-week of November) before the damned winter sets in = spring edging it out.
ReplyDeleteActually, come to think of it, not even all the benefits of spring, what with that "nights getting longer" thing. I think I'm the only person I know who enjoys springing forward and dreads falling back; I value gaining/keeping an extra hour of daylight far more than one hour of sleep on one day. (Guess that's what comes of being a natural morning person raised to believe that getting up before noon was Not Done. I've managed to push that back to 9, but I'm still working on believing that it's okay to get up earlier than that.)
I have this sneaking suspicion that given half a chance, I'd be completely nocturnal. And if pressed, I'd have to concede that if I lived somewhere else, somewhere cooler with a completely different set of local plants and a lot less pollution, I'd find spring a lot more enjoyable than I do.
ReplyDelete