Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Seasons change







Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall are for amateurs. This is Minnesota. Our seasons cannot be constrained by a paltry handful of prosaic terms used by inferior climates. Our seasons are kaleidoscopic, ever shifting and altering, recurring with sudden ferocity and then peeling away to reveal something never seen before and yet... familiar. Run through our seasons with me:


(This list would start sometime in September usually)


Is it over?
Wicked
All the colors are burnt
Haunted wind
Dead and Ugly
Cold
Holy Fuck!
Fairyland
My nose froze together
Watch what happens when you throw boiling water in the air!
It's 20 out and I'm comfortable in a t-shirt
I don't understand, is that a color?
Look, a flower!
I didn't wear enough clothes
It's so beautiful, does this always happen?
Flooded basement
Basement still flooded
I can't believe it's light out!
Look, a bug, how cute!
Ahhhhh, bugs!!
It's perfect out
I'm sweating
Argh, the sun!

Of course, this is just a selection of common seasons. Some of them don't happen every year, and these certainly aren't all inclusive, but they do recur with alarming regularity.

For our current season we have:

Even you can see this is unpleasant

I hope it will moderate soon to another season because I don't like hot weather. That might be an understatement. Every time the heat and humidity rears its head I get furious. Today as the temperature started cranking up I found myself reflecting on the apocryphal story of the old Eskimo. The story goes that the old Eskimos, when they got really old and did not want to be a burden on their people, would climb onto an ice floe and float off to sea. 

I finally understood this story from the inside. The old person is not seeking death. Merely it is Summer, which they can no longer bear, and they are casting off north,  searching for one small cool breeze.








2 comments:

  1. Perhaps you'd like to swap places with my sister in NH? She posted a picture this morning of the fire in the woodstove. It's 47 degrees and raining.

    Weather; can't live with it, can't live without it. But at least it changes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wouldn't have traded this morning for it, but I'd be happy to exchange the afternoon!

      Delete

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