by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Blog
The cherry tree blooms in early spring. There are three on a street close to me and I noticed the buds coming out just the other day. I cannot now remember this prelude as they quickly blossomed into a rich fullness. It was a surprise but so are all the early spring flowers. It never made sense to me as a child: I thought if I could stare long enough at this daffodil then I would see the motion of life come to the quick. No, I learned something else: life you must turn away from for the colours to come.
What do we comprehend? It seems impossible that there would be a person not affected by spring, even if it is only a passing glance at a flower, or a passing mood of ease. Springtime’s labour can only be apprehended as effortless though the buds fight with all their might to wave as a full leaf. Is it then: what comes naturally to me is the straightest course, or rather the flowering of my life depends on a vital effort? With all the art we possess, it seems impossible to match that quiet, unassuming way the march of spring blossoms.
Make no mistake. What you see, smell, and hear in spring is full of desperation. In any case, we should pay tribute to such a show. I have yet to find anything that depicts desperation with such loveliness.
With an attitude dogmatically and obsessively clung to, someone can delude themselves thoroughly for as long as they wish. Spring will teach this person nothing, nor any other season for that matter. If they are lucky, it may one day turn into an attitude they needed to live through, and spring will ring a miraculous resonance through their bones.
I do not care about any scoffing attitude towards my attitude. I do not care about any bickerings about whether my attitude on spring is hackneyed. Being alive in spring is be reborn whilst still living. Spring is redemption. For there is something called ‘higher naivete’ and it will serve you loyally throughout your days, with the same constancy as that leaf which is now returning on the branch.
But being reborn does not mean anything mystical. Perhaps a spring in twenty years from now will tell me otherwise. I read somewhere that a practicing Zen Buddhist goes through the following motions: they see the moon as a part, a phenomenon like any other. They then see it as one with all else in reality, as the bird, as the self. Lastly, they see the moon again as it is simply the moon. I won’t elaborate because I am not in a position to. I will say that spring’s rebirth is just like living.
A great attitude in life is never to shoot for something profound or of some grandeur. Too often it ends up as a second-rate embarrassment, or you end up a side-walk trickster flogging your wares; and everybody knows, nothing profound should be flogged as if it had some exchange rate. Even worse, the mind cannot take much of reality; religious types train like athletes. It is most likely a problem inherent in language. That doesn’t matter for now, profundity and grandeur are, strangely, hard to escape from – patience in your work and life forces this fact upon you just as the seasons are unstoppable. The old ritualists knew this and danced and sung – what else is there to do?
The mind of someone who knows where they’re going is the branch of so many leaves waiting to unfurl. It is simply a task of patience and discipline. Who knows to what purpose those leaves will provide. The star magnolia tree is already heaping its petals on the ground – around the bough is a littering of white. It comes to quick and blows it. Happy young star that shoots for all its worth, lovely to see after the drought of winter. The large purple beech looks on, barely a leaf out. It’ll provide a welcome shade in the summer.
The comparison between ourselves and a season is soothing but we know our lives are not so; too variable, too many options, too many facets of untranslatable experience. We look around at the buds of spring and think it simple, but we really haven’t a clue what hidden degrees of freedom here are accounted. What strife. If we would know that, by what force drives life, then we would be stunned and embarrassed to even make the comparison with what we believe our goals in life are. It is enough to see, smell, and hear it in the spring; it is enough to welcome in the pageantry of life in ourselves.
===========
THe Carl Kruse Nonprofits Blog Homepage is at https://carlkruse.org
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
We often cover the chages in the seasons on the blog such as our former posts on Spring here, and also on Spring here, and a more technical view of Spring over here.
Also find Carl Kruse on an old blog here.