In a past-life, I would write a series about the seasons. I’d use those installments to mark the passage of time and wax poetic about the seasons evolving and bleeding into each other. That as one season ended and another began, we’d keep moving forward: because the seasons would keep changing even as we asked (kindly) for it to stop. Each new season beautifully distinct from the last, but resolute in their transient familiarity.
As the twentieth year of the millennia turned into the twenty-first, the days turned into months and the months have become a year and some change. Just like the rest of us, the seasons are scathing, bitter, and weary.
I read something about the seasons this past year that I’ll think about forever: “the seasons no longer mark the passing of time but various failed bargains with nature.”
I’ve failed so many times.
winter
H: 35°F; L: 25°F | snow storms
It was a cold winter. A slog. I was working at five p.m. and all the light would disappear from the sky. It was dark before dusk, and I was deflated. I didn’t know it until the first few days of sun peaked through late February, but it came to me like a full-body restoration. I don’t remember much aside from the brisk cold and the little space heater that kept my room warm through the evenings. There was still no where to go.
Wilted, is the word. To cower in the absence of sun and calciferol.
spring
H: 82°F; L: 36°F | light rain
I felt vacant. Hollowed out by the past year: one whole year.
There are a few systematic phases to picking up new interests while the world warps in a different direction. I watched Mare of Easttown and couldn’t recall the last time I felt so enthralled by a show week-to-week. Listened to Sour, repeatedly, as go the chronicles of teenage angst on a sonic warpath. I found myself eager to write again, but lost that eagerness as soon as we turned the corner on the solstice. I filled this incessant void called time by playing video games and revisited the Pokémon pals of my youth. I took up painting with watercolors, studied up on color theory, and revived pigments from pan-baked slumber with drops of water.
summer
H: 98°F; L: 72°F | high humidity
It was good for a while. I wish it was still as great as I’d hoped at the start. I watched the Gossip Girl reboot and this was one of many things I would end up disappointed by this summer. I saw people, real people, for the first time in a little over a year. I started reflecting on the pieces of myself I lost while at home, and everything I had to regain by being out and about once again.
It was a warm summer in the city: some days sweltering, other days mellow and baking. It felt ripe for renewal, and I was planning all the could-be of possibility. Planning up until I learned my lesson, once again, that only the best laid plans go astray. By the end of the season, we were once suspended in doubtful animation. Nothing had really changed after all; but the heat had deluded us into a cozy, sun-speckled fantasy.
fall
H: 70°F; L: 51°F | brisk chill
When fall begins, we renew. I was in a different state. I last left off in the middle of stanza, and resumed in a separate paragraph of my life. It wouldn’t be the same this time; it may still be.
As things crackled and stirred slowly to life, I wondered if this is what it could have been like all this time. I purchased my apartment essentials, rearranged cheap furniture, and put up postcards on a blank white wall; then went grocery shopping and did all the boring, mundane things you have to do when you’re out on your own. I ate so many bowls of ramen (indoors), with many different people. I listened to Red (Taylor’s Version) as late autumn hummed along, and it was like coming back to something broken and great again. What was once a crumpled piece of paper smoothed out upon second thought. And it was fine, and it was fun, and it was finally here in some form.
The seasons didn’t really change this time around; the leaves they stayed on their branches this year. But soon, we broke off into a winter—a preamble to the holidays and next year.