“What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.”
― Kobayashi Issa, Poems
As of March 20th, we have officially entered the spring season. And while it is still disarmingly chilly and dreary in the northeast portion of the United States that I roam, the beginning buds in the trees and points of crocuses sticking up from the ground indicate that indeed warmer, longer and brighter days are ahead. It is this optimism that I think can serve the writer best, for what is a blank piece of paper (or computer screen) than an empty patch of earth, and aren’t ideas for stories and books nothing more than seeds that we hope will grow into something beautiful and bountiful. Of course, even bad ideas, i.e. weeds, have their purpose, villains that choke out flowers or our main characters. Perhaps I’m getting caught up in symbolism, but I blame the excitement of the season… and my allergies. Anyway, here are a few novel thoughts on spring.
“I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.”
― Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.” ― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” ― Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard’s Egg
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” ― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
“I glanced out the window at the signs of spring. The sky was almost blue, the trees were almost budding, the sun was almost bright.” ― Millard Kaufman, Bowl of Cherries
“It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.” ― John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga