myth of spring

i wish i'd actually made the film for which this is the trailer. following the two-minute-plus teaser is the epistolary working "script." i'm so impressed with people (particularly those way younger than me) that surmount their trepidation and make films and music and art and design and perform. i wish that when i made things it wasn't such a solitary pastime, because their is so much that i need/want to learn and work on. this little piece of 2005 is very innocent.

cp: How does spring work?  It’s a broad question, but what makes Spring Spring? It's more than just a natural phenomenon isn't it? Somehow, I feel different, psychologically.

az: Your queries as to the vernal quarter of the year, and its effect on one's own proclivities, are intriguing. Are we influenced hormonally, or is the renewal of our vigor a societal machination? I have overheard the students, as they promenade, speaking of "spring fever," and wonder at the power of budding blossoms and ancient archetypes.

To elucidate, a story. The Ancient Greeks believed in the myth of Persephone, who was abducted by Hades, lord of the Underworld, to be his bride. Her mother, Demeter, a principal goddess of the harvest, fertility, and the Earth, was distraught. She searched the world over for her sunny daughter, to no avail. She neglected fauna and flora and the world learned winter. When she heard tell of Persephone's over-hasty internment in the land of the dead, she importuned Zeus, lord over immortals, to wrest Persephone back. Zeus said that if Persephone had eaten from the land of the dead, she may be condemned. In fact, the girl had eaten six seeds of the pomegranate, and so Hades and Demeter compromised that for every seed eaten, Persephone must spend one month with her husband. During those months Demeter would make the land barren and hard, in mourning. When Persephone is returned, the earth would be fertile, and burst forth joyously.

Perhaps you are too academic to be swayed by such antiquated explanations. We must further explore our sources to achieve satisfaction. The word spring has several definitions, I feel like they're all related in meaning and attuned to your mood. the season from the march equinox to the June solstice. a source of water, sometimes warm, from underground. the body that distorts and gathers energy to bounce back -- think of a spiral spring and its tightly-wound potential. as a verb, to spring is to move up or forwards. all definitions imply a source of energy.

What do our modern philosophers infer? Do please tell me what you discover.

cp: I remember something about Nietzsche believing that time is circular.  That everything that has happened has happened before and will continue to happen forever.  Not simultaneously, but in a huge loop spanning millenniums.  I suppose this would leave free will in the category of illusion. What was his logic behind this?  Was Nietzsche a fatalist?  I suppose it could be true; we follow cycles every day, for example our sleep cycle - or, to stay on topic, the seasons.  Spring comes every year without fail.  But then you may challenge that and say, spring only comes every year as long as there is an earth to host the arrival.  To that I ask, can’t there be cycles within cycles?  If we accept the Big Bang and that the universe is expanding, then we also know that at some point it must contract.  If we look at some of Steven Hawking's early ideas about time then we know that a theory of his was that once this contraction happens, the laws of time would reverse.  No longer would there be order to chaos, but chaos to order.  The glass of water that fell from the table and shattered would collect itself and jump back to the dinner setting intact.  All this "rewinding" until the cycle starts over again with a new explosion.  Would explosion after explosion produce the same universe?  This is ridiculous, since this idea has since been proven false - for some reason or another, I'm not quite sure - I read the book a long time ago.  But the arrows of time have been proposed to have many lengths and directions.  I wonder if the universe is slowing down or speeding up - it seems like everyday they say one or the other…  maybe, if it all works somewhat like this, is the reason for the collective unconscious, instinct, hunches, familiarity, de ja vu...

I wonder then, could spring be the reminder of those things that are familiar?  rather, our memories are brought to life as the environment is.  our senses are no doubt affected by climate, and as they inform another I imagine our brains are stimulated.   

az: why did you say "forget about it" in regard to free will as an illusion?  I suppose if you align your philosophy with the vision of the Trafalmadorians, history is star spaghetti, the universe is continually exploding, everything that has ever happened is still happening, in its particular instant. Jews still burning in Auschwitz, pterodactyls still winging overhead, lightning still zippering towards the sea, Pythagoras still lecturing, the first cell still dividing into two, the high note is still peeling pure.

cp: tell me more about the natural sciences and their influences on the psyche.  I'm also intrigued by the archetypes that Persephone fulfills, have you found that most mythological female characters fall into the kidnapped or submissive roll?

az: spring is fickle. a tease, sighing in your ear one minute, slapping your face with a gale the next. we keep going on the hope that we'll live to see her spread into summer. unpredictability is exciting.

is there a conflict between nostalgia and excitement for new?

 (T.S. Eliot's cruelest month.)

there are  so many goddesses for springtime, every culture has one, and they are strong women. Persephone isn't the archetype of spring -- her mother replenishes, the one who brought the world to its knees. the most important goddesses to our musings are Ashtareth and Eostre, aspects of the same archetype, really. this Phoenician moon/fertility goddess is called Ishtar by the Accadians, Astarte by the Greeks.

Eostre, or Ostara, is the Anglo-Saxon personification of the dawn. she is fertility, a friend to children, (she would change her pet bird into a rabbit to amuse them). Oestre is Eos to the Greeks, Aurora to the Romans. The Goddess of Spring, her symbols were the hare, the colored egg, and shamrocks, before the Christians appropriated her rituals and substituted a male deity. what does Easter mean now?

arrows of time.... or arrows of Aradia, a Tuscan Spring goddess, who, like Eros, could shoot arrows to provoke love. a goddess of maidenhood that became conscious of her sexuality at this time every year.

the Africans have her, as Aido-Hwedo and Mawu, and Kali is the Hindu aspect.

science is the religion of the current civilization. we believe that spring is the result of earth's tilted axis and our respondent angle in relation to the sun, the plane of the ecliptic by 23.45°. the degree of inclination matters more than our distance from the sun at any point of the year. we're nearing vernal equinox, which is when day and night will be of equal duration, and the sun will cross the celestial equator. and back into mythos and superstition, Aries and Taurus will rise in the sky, then Gemini.

e.e. cummings and D.H. Lawrence are both fascinated by Spring. I'm listening to Mozart's and Strauss's Spring compositions.

"Spring is like a perhaps hand" e.e. cummings....changing everything carefully...Hand in a window (carefully to and fro moving New and Old things, while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there)and.....without breaking anything.

"there are so many tictoc" e.e. cummings.....Spring is not regulated and does not get out of order nor do its hands a little jerking move over numbers slowly.....we do not wind it up it has no weights springs wheels inside of its slender self no indeed dear nothing of the kind.

cp: You ask, is there a conflict between nostalgia and excitement for the new? I suppose there is, but what is anything without conflict?  Without a negative there is no positive. Could there be "new" without an old to reference?  I believe Spring is both nostalgic and new, always, as with so many other things in life, it is circular. ...so what if some songs are old, they are always reinterpreted.  The circle has no end, right? This is the fun and misery of such contemplations - they have no end.

az: is time circular, is experience circular, or are time and experience linear? why don't things have ends? for some, this is the last spring. sometimes, the cycle breaks. new cycles begin.

cp: A few warm days, then cold again - a tug of war.

az: insulating layers are more than metaphoric; you take off a coat and a scarf and a sweater and you feel lighter. light itself is a necessity, limited during winter. as our daily ration of sunshine increases, we receive more vitamin c, and our moods improve. we feel more optimistic.

cp: In Ontario, on the first day it was warm enough to play outside without coats, all the children were sent to all the hospitals. they had seizures because of the sudden dose of vitamin D.  this is a case where the lines between good and evil are again blurred.  why would spring hurt us?

This must my comfort be: That sun that warms you here shall shine on me.

az: one of the poems that turned me on to poetry, Ode to a Grecian urn, by Keats, has the lines "Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss / Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve / She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss / For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! // Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed / Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu." it's about this bucolic scene depicted on an ancient urn, a moment frozen, before fates are met. things in their newness are set. did you ever feel sympathy for characters depicted in art? Christ suffering, men in violent rage, women reclining en dishabille? so still.

earth is indeed required for spring to come. congruently, if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, it makes no sound. sound is vibrations pitched audible to the human ear. if there is no one to receive and aurally interpret the reverberations, nothing is heard.

I haven't seen any flowers yet. have you? I just read about the Italian Spring goddess, Flora. her festival, Floralia, is April 28th. the Romans recognized that the blossoming parts of plants are not merely decorative, but are reproductive organs. does spring fever arise from the not-so-subliminal messages of trees and gardens? there is even a language of flowers, Floriography. it is written that flowers speak secretly, but directly to the universe. sweethearts used to give each other bouquets, various blooms denoted with specific sentiment. not just to give a gift, something that smelled sweet or looked pretty, but to convey a discreet message.

Between what, or whom, is the tug of war?

cp: the tug of war is between the white witch, who called herself the queen or Narnia could be at one of the rope.  but she might not be the best candidate for the match, after all, winter doesn't exist because of some devil's desire.  Satan belongs in the heat of summer, where the sun's explosions crack harsh on the backs of field workers and thirsty lizards.  its also interesting to note that this villain sports the color white, traditionally black represents the enemy. While that generalization is not entirely accurate, the way by which color can be matched with something like good or evil - hot and cold.  what is color?  what is good? how do these elusive "things" inform one another?

your brief comments on arrows sparked an especial interest - Eros and arrows and Aradia.  I like that...  what's the origin of the word?  could arrows of Aradia shoot an arrow at the White Queen and win the war?  is jack frost a villain?

az: you referenced color and seasons as attributes of good and evil, black linked to vileness, white to purity. you were not sure whether summer or winter was the devil's backdrop. it reminded me of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, particularly his Inferno. though some of hell blazed, the innermost circle was all ice and here the damnedest traitors - Judas, Cassius and Brutus  - were held in Lucifer's three mouths, while his three wings whipped them with freezing blasts of impotence, ignorance and hatred. 

their fate reminded me of a poem by Robert Frost, Fire and Ice: Some say the world will end in fire / Some say in ice. / From what I’ve tasted of desire / I hold with those who favor fire. / But if it had to perish twice / I think I know enough of hate / To know that for destruction ice / Is also great / And would suffice. .....the difficulty with these symbols is that they are so extreme.

as for the white witch: C.S. Lewis was not always an aggressively Christian philosopher. until he was 30 he was an atheist, and it was, in part, Dante's Commedia that influenced Lewis to reevaluate religion. another part was Sandro Botticelli's Primavera.

most commonly interpreted as a whimsical arrangement of characters from Greek mythology, the Primavera is specifically an allegory of the Divine Comedy, (Dante and Botticelli were friends and collaborators.) particularly Purgatorio. Adam and Eve are shown in the garden of Eden with Beatrice, Venus, Cupid, Satan, and the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity.

this image is intensely layered: Adam is dressed as Mars, who was the god of agriculture before he was the god of war, and the month of March also contains the vernal equinox. the cupid's arrow was what led Dante to Beatrice, and Beatrice led Dante to G-d. Beatrice's depiction is like that of a Madonna or a Venus. 

similarly, the works of C.S. Lewis are religious allegories, particularly the Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan is a Christ-figure. his poem "Chanson d'Aventure" expresses his wish for an eternal springtime -- his vision of Heaven. of course, all aspects of Christianity are based on pagan concepts. long before Lewis and Dante, people languished through Winter, sustained by the memory of green... and sweet.

turning to the bible itself: from the Song of Solomon, "My beloved spake, and said unto me / Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away / For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone / The flowers appear on the earth / the time of the singing of birds is come / and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land / The fig tree putteth forth her green figs / and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell / Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."

there is a wealth of involved answers to your original query, "what causes us to perceive springtime as we do, and is it more than a natural phenomenon?" and I have attempted to touch on a few. is there anyone that has not experienced this season? how could it be described to someone that had never felt it? is there anyone that has never encountered spring? 

here is my venture: though you could of course await the arrival of warmer days in the environment of your own city, I suggest an expedition into the wilds, to see the changes wrought by the tilting of our planet. perhaps in light of our exchange, you will comprehend springtime in a new way, and be inspired.

lastly, a stanza from a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which seemed appropriate: "I dream'd that, as I wander'd by the way / Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring / And gentle odours led my steps astray / Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring / Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay / Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling / Its green arms round the bosom of the stream / But kiss'd it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream."