The Seasons

The seasons: how do they figure prominently in art and writing that you love. In your own life? What does each season say about life?

The seasons are an easy metaphor & for that reason, they are often overdone to the point of cliche.
However, they do serve a useful purpose as an introduction to metaphor. As in learning any craft - and there is an element of craft to poetry- starting with the simple is how we learn the complex. So we can learn to understand for example Shakespear's "Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang" by using the cold barreness of winter as an introduction to the deeper cold & emptyness of loss.

Yes, they can be overdone. Thank you for pointing that out. So many obligatory nods to the seasons. Can make for very bad writing, indeed. As with anything, it is all in the handing, isn't it? I think what inspired this topic originally was my rereading of several Wallace Stevens poems. He worked a great deal with seasons. Seasons provide rich texture in our work if for nothing else their metaphorical allusions.

Yes, "It was a dark and stormy night" and all that.

Growing up in Texas, I unconsciously absorbed the impression that I didn't live in the sort of place people were supposed to live in. All the stories in my reading textbooks were about children growing up in places where the leaves turned brilliant colors in the fall and it was snowy through the winter. I had never known seasons like that. Once, we had a story about a boy whose family had moved to Arizona or someplace like that, and he assuaged his sense of loss by building a cactus garden or something of the sort. How awful, the story seemed to say, to have to live in a strange, barren place where there were no true seasons, but how admirable for this plucky boy to make the best of so awful a situation in such a creative way. Well, fine. We should all be so plucky in times of disaster. But I felt rather disrespected for living somewhere other than in New England.

And there really are seasons elsewhere. They are just different in their expression, and perhaps more subtle in some ways, than the typical New England seasons.

margad, very right that seasons are different in their expression, depending on where one lives. I wonder what makes a certain expression appeal more directly to one? Living in NW Ohio now, I find I love Spring in a way I didn't in NC. When the ground thaws and the crocus sends up its heads, I feel a stirring inside myself. But I tend to love winter most. The snowy fields are a different kind of fertility, all the energy underground, just waiting. The idea of that excites me.

Well, I'm a Vermonter, and here, everything is basically about winter. Spring hits in mid-April. Summer hits in July. Already things are beginning to smell like fall. And by Thanksgiving we'll have snow again. (Of course, the Vermont joke is that we have four seasons: Kinda Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Construction.) (But then, we also say, "If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?")

I like it. I like the way we basically spend the summer waiting for death, and the winter waiting for life. My favorite seasons are fall and spring - the between-seasons, where you know you're building to something, but you keep falling back into where you were. This fall, I'll look forward to winter, and pine for it, and think it's finally coming, but then I'll wake up and it'll be eighty degrees again.

It's perfect. It's like life. And not in that typical "We're born, we grow, we wither, we die" way. It's like the way life plays with you and messes with your head, and how you can never pin it down to anything, and it's full of irony, but is ultimately satisfying.

Some of the early European cultures recognized only two seasons, summer and winter. I love the myth of Ceres and Persephone, and how Persephone's time in the underworld was reflected in the cold and barren season of winter above ground. The myth is often told in a spirit of mourning for the lost memory of a time when it was always summer and the earth was perpetually fruitful (perhaps a memory of humanity's origins in tropical Africa?), but I can also see the value of a winter sojourn of deep reflection and work on the subconscious level. In astrology, Pluto (named for the god of the underworld who abducted Persephone) repesents transformation.

#7 Margad, I was very enamored with the Persephone myth when I wrote my book. I wanted to take the character on an underworld journey. It is one of my favorite myths. Thus Thumbelina is also one of my favorite fairytales. Her journey mirrors Persephone's nicely. I love the idea of going undergound, into the interior, away from the "light" of reason and discovering deep truths.

Now that you mention this, I can see the myth's influence on your novel. Pearl's pregnancy makes her like Ceres and the reappearance of spring's fruitfulness. The Celts believed in a triple goddess who appeared as maiden, mother and crone. Persephone and your young protagonist fit the maiden archetype - which had to do with youth, inexperience and independence, not necessarily virginity - while Ceres and the older, pregnant Pearl fit the mother archetype. Both Ceres and the Celtic mother goddess remain unattached to a husband.

#9

To go along with a discussion we are having on a different thread about self-indulgence: One of the ways I found to subvert my own tendencies toward self-indulgence in my work is to overlay my experience with myth. It works nicely as long as one is not too obvious about it. This connects experience to something universal, and, hopefully, people feel that, whether they actually recognize the myth or not.

I've always favored autumn. Everything goes beautiful with dying.

I love autumn, too, but it passes so quickly. Too quickly. Maybe that is just another reason to love it best. But I wanted to find a way to love the long, cold winters here, and I have.

Where I grew up, winter is just a long autumn without the colors. Being up north, I'm just finding out what winter really is. And I like it sometimes, when I'm not falling down on the ice. There's something about snow that makes me hyper-aware. I guess it's because I'm not used to it. It reminds me of parties where fights break out, and suddenly everything is super vivid because fights don't usually break out and you all at once become aware of imminent danger. So that's how I feel about snow...like it might beat me up.

But isn't it lovely to feel the sun on your cheek, that little brush of warmth, when everything around you is frozen? I love that. It's like the prettiest girl in class picked me out and gave me a kiss.

#13: Jim, Autumns were like that in NC where I grew up, too. Sometimes we would drive to the mountains so we could see the colors. I hated summers because I had to live in places (like trailers) with no AC, and I still have a deep dread of summer. So Autumn and school signaled more for me than just a change of seasons. I agree that the snow does make one hyper-aware. Southerners have this odd relationship to snow. Carson McCullers talks about it in her novella Member of the Wedding. Do you remember that, how Frankie dreamed of snow? I still feel like I'm in wonderland when it snows.

Winter doesn't beat me up, though, summer does. Like right now, today. We have no AC, and it is so hot in the house.

The warm sun and the cool/cold air is heavenly, yes it is.

I love the evangelical cadence of your last sentence. I could stomp to it.

You know, I haven't read Member of the Wedding. And I just love Carson McCullers. I guess I better get on it. In the meantime, I'm basking in the balmy Boston "summer." We got up to the mid-eighties a few days ago, and I thought I might even break a sweat. Meanwhile, all the old cronies down in Georgia are sweltering in hundred-plus heat. Suckers! (Isn't "Sucker" a great McCullers story? Weird connection.) I hope the heat lets up in Ohio. I know how bad no A/C can be. Last summer, when I was in Baltimore, I didn't have A/C, and I was on the top floor of an 8 story high-rise in hundred degree heat. It was miserable.

I don't know if you ever read the story "August Heat." I don't know who it's by, and I'm not sure it exists (I might have imagined it), but there's a guy who goes insane in the August heat and then wanders past a cemetery where he sees his own grave, and the death date is the very day he's walking past. The story ends...well, if it does exist, I don't want to spoil it. But, I felt like the guy going insane in the heat.

Jim, I read "August Heat" when I was a teenager. I think it was in a book I got from Scholastic Book Club. I want to say it was in Night in Funland and Other Stories from Literary Cavalcade edited by Peden. But I'm not sure. I actually still have that book on my shelf, somewhere.

I found a PDF copy of "August Heat" by W. F. Harvey. It begins,

"I have had what I believe to be the most remarkable day in my life, and while the events are still fresh in my mind, I wish to put them down on paper as clearly as possible."

Isn't this a wonderful anthem for writers?

SPOILER! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT THE STORY SPOILED FOR YOU!

The ending of "August Heat":
(makes me think of Roethke's heat maddened summer fly)

We are sitting now in a long, low room beneath the eaves. Atkinson has sent his wife to bed. He himself is busy sharpening some tools at a little oilstone, smoking one of my cigars the while.

The air seems charged with thunder. I am writing this at a shaky table before the open window.

The leg is cracked, and Atkinson, who seems a handy man with his tools, is going to mend it as soon as he has finished putting an edge on his chisel.

It is after eleven now. I shall be gone in less than an hour.

But the heat is stifling.

It is enough to send a man mad.

It sure is. And I'm so glad you found that story! I'd googled it without any results. I'm now going to have to look up W.F. Harvey. I don't remember too much about the story, but I remember the horror it made me feel.

Apparently all his books are out of print, and Harvey was primarily a poet. Thanks so much for posting that ending, though: that last sentence is just so powerful!

Jim, you can find the story here: http://www.donaldtyson.com/august.html

Wow. I hadn't remembered how well he integrates concerns about time. And the epitaph: "In the midst of life we are in death"...wow.

Rereading the story, I can see why it appealed to me when I was young. I didn't know then I'd be writer; I wanted to be an artist. The emphasis on writing and art, the crispness of the writing, my intense dislike (hatred! fear!) of heat, and the amazing story made me swoon. It still does. I'm so glad you reminded me about that story.

I love the language you quoted from that story. It reminds me of Poe. I miss that formal, unhurried precision in modern writing. In Poe and Lovecraft and "August Heat," it seems to heighten the sinister mood.

#23
I think I know what you mean about "August Heat." It seems to me the lack of modifiers gives the prose a cleanliness that keeps us from knowing too much too soon.

I always am strangely surprised when I look up the biography of a writer I've loved a long time and find they have been dead a long time. Like the author of "August Heat." I was shocked to see he had lived so long ago. Truly, stories are living things. Dead? The person who wrote these words is dead? I think on it in disbelief, then I feel a little sad. Sometimes a melancholy falls on me.

I found my copy of NIGHT IN FUNLAND! It is edited by Jerome Brondfield, not William Peden. The book's copyright is 1968 (what a year! No wonder these stories dug so deeply into my soul). And, yes, "August Heat" is in the book. A
lso William Peden's "Night in Funland"
Price Day's "4 O'Clock"
William Sansom's "The Vertical Ladder,"
Elias Venezis's "The Sea Gulls"
Borden Deal's "Antaeus"
Howard Nemerov's "Exchange of Men"
Daniel Keyes's "Flowers for Algernon"
Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts"
Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game"
Jack Finney's "Contents of a Dead Man's Pocket"
Geoffrey Household's "As Best He can"
Stephen Vincent Benet's "Too Early Spring"

I was thirteen when I read these stories.

Where I live in Texas we've had the most mild summer in the nineteen years I've been here. We've only had five or six days over a hundred, but it's been at least two months since we were below ninety during the day. At night it drops into the low nineties, high eighties. Normally we have thirty or forty days between May and September when it is over a hundred, sometimes into the one teens.

Another weather disaster comes from the man made reservoirs in our area. There are forty or fifty of these in the DFW area covering hundreds of thousands of acres, of course during the heat of the summer these reservoirs evaporate millions of gallons of water into the atmosphere which is naturally dry. This evaporation raises the humidity to unbearable volumes. In the summer we live in our airconditioned houses, drive to our airconditioned destinations in our airconditioned cars, and work in our airconditioned offices. Misery all around.

In the fall the leaves on our trees go from tired, leathery green straight to dry brown. The only trees that have color are the few imported Maples. Our fall display reminds me of a dull, dreary, tired earth-toned blanket.

The winter is the only time we have decent weather. Days are usually in the forties and fifties, occasionally we will get into the eighties and nineties for a brief time. We do get occasional snows, but mostly they are cause for excitement and a teaching moment or two.

Kindergartener: Look, the sky is falling, the sky is falling!

Teacher: No, no, the sky isn't falling, that's called snow, it's very rare and you must remember this moment so you can tell your grandchildren that you have seen it.

The spring is rather pedestrian. The soil in most of the area is pH 11+. Not much that makes pretty blooms grows at that level of alkilinity.

I dream of snow. When I think about retiring, I can't make up my mind between the Dalmatian Coast, New England, or Western Virginia. Funny how Texas is off the bottom of my list.

I grew up in the DFW area, and I well remember the increase in humidity that resulted from all the reservoirs that were put in. When I was growing up, people mostly had swamp coolers, but when everyone switched to central air-conditioning, it was no relief to me. I had the choice of being outdoors and too hot or indoors and too cold. I chose outdoors when I could, because I preferred the natural heat to the artificial chill.

Your joke about the snow bringing teaching moments made me chuckle, and reminded me of a story I heard about some children in West Texas during the terrible drought of 1884. They were playing outside when a few drops of rain fell, and they ran inside shouting to their parents, "Water is falling out of the sky!"

#28: Margad, I remember those swamp coolers. My parents used them when I was little. I always found the summers to be suffocating in NC; I always dreaded them. Another subject: a number of people seem to say Fall is their favorite season: why do you think that is...anybody? It is a beautiful time, to be sure. But it signals the beginning of death. I wonder if people think about that at all??? The symbolism of Fall???

Theresa: Fall doesn't always signal the beginning of death. I just finished Thirteen Moons (touchstone not working) by Charles Frazier, and according to the book, one of the fall moons is the new year for the Cherokees. And from a gardening perspective, technically fall is the time of new plant life - trees, shrubs and perennial plants are creating buds, underground growth, etc. that will bloom in the spring.

i never considered Fall that way. Thank you Talbin.

In the colder regions of the northern hemisphere, Fall, with its cooler weather & frosts brings to an end the green growth of summer. But while we watch the leaves turn into bright colors & then wither & fall, those same leaves carpet the earth with nutrients that will nurish the new growth of spring. In the garden, plants die at their tops, but their roots grow fat with stored energy ready for the days to warm again. Look on the branches of decidious trees & you will see small buds where next summers' leaves will emerge. Butterflies curl into cocoons to sleep away the cold as many mammals crawl into burroughs. In Greek legend, the daughter of the harvest goddess spent half a year in the underworld to emerge again in the spring when life on the earth was renewed. The theme of death & resurrection is common in northern climates. It tells us that while things might appear dead on the outside, somewhere in an invisible world, life continues & the circle will turn again. Doesn't the Jewish New Year among others also begin in the Fall?
Yet the season is one that inspires melancholy. It is sad to see things wither & grow old, just as it is sad to see our loved ones grow old & fragile. Yet it is part of life's pattern, time's turning wheel. A comforting thought which is expressed on a grief site I visit is that the time which passes since we bid our loved one goodbye also brings us closer to that time when we may meet again.

>32 MarianV: Yes - of course - Rosh Hashanah is a Jewish New Year. This year it was September 12-14.

NY Hudson Valley here. I have all the "real" seasons everyone reads about--Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. My belief is that heating and air conditioning have ruined seasons. Most people experience the seasons in small doses now, as they run from the climate controlled house to the climate controlled car to the climate controlled office or store. And New Yorkers are so funny! They never enjoy the season they're in. It too hot in the summer and too cold in the summer so they adjust their thermostat to always feel the opposite of what it is outside.
I'm an amateur gardener. I love each season for different reasons.

Spring is my chance to start over, to promise myself to weed and renew paths and plant. I love having a clean slate after the ground thaws. Crocuses pop up over the front yard and fairy houses appear where ever my children roam. I also get more exercise because I push around my eco-friendly reel mower.

Summer is family time. We homeschool during the other seasons. In summer, we kick back in the hammock or on a tree limb and read for the joy of reading. Usually we take turns sharing a book or two and spend evenings discussing it or hanging over my husband's shoulder as he catches up with us. My youngest keeps cool by hanging under the spray as I water my young plantings.

Autumn is about color, the bright purple asters, red sedums and leaves that dazzle the eyes in fiery hues. The cool breezes are welcome after the sticky heat of summer and I'm ready to wave a white flag to the weeds that got out of control again. And who can resist a big pile of leaves in the middle of the yard? It's like cleaning up after a wild party. There is a lot to do, but we have no regrets.

Winter is best with a cup of hot chocolate at an icy window, watching the snow fall. I always feel cheated if we have a mild winter. We love snow. It gives us a chance to build snow creatures and put snow faces on the trees.

This is already long and I haven't even mentioned our birds, wildlife and insects. Seasons are about experiencing nature. Where ever you are, if you get out into the natural world you will notice the change of seasons. Get out and enjoy the view!

Actually, part of the reason fall's my favorite season is because of the whole "death" thing. I'm a native Vermonter, and when I spent a year in LA, the lack of seasons made no sense to me. Nothing died or was reborn - actually everything was kept alive by "recycled water" sprinklers... it all looks lovely, and yes, it's great to get on the plane when it's 10 below and get off and find it 75 and sunny.

But I couldn't trust anything, or anyone, in a place where there weren't seasons. There's something missing in the hearts of places and people that live without death and rebirth.

Plus it smells really good when they start burning leaves.

My appreciation of fall here in Texas, unfortunately has nothing to do with fall. In North Texas where I am, when others get a patchwork quilt of color from the fall, when others get that wonderful quality of sunlight in Fall (and Spring), our trees turn brown, the live oaks and other year round leafed trees and plants just look very tired and irritable, just like most of the people here, we have the same hazy, blue, hot sky we always have.

Fall signals the time when in a month or two the temps will finally drop below 90 (32C) on a regular basis. The nights will drop into the sixties (16 - 20C) regularly and the breeze will blow, clearing out the hot, dirty air.

Finally, at the very end of fall (mid-December) the trees will finally drop their brown, dead leaves. Of course by then the temps are routinely in the 50's (10 -15C.) and there will be at least three months before the temps get back up to 90 again.

Yes, Fall is my favorite season, just for the breather it affords before having to psychologically gear up for the spring/summer.

One final comment for you gardeners out there who look forward to spring, here unless you replace your soil down to four or five feet your gardening choices are limited. The pH is 11+.

The life/death/life cycle is of perpetual interest to me. I posed my original question because I wondered how many thought of fall as death and how many saw life and death as reciprocal. I have just been rereading Walt Whitman tonight and these lines raised off the page:

And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

#36

Gene, your comment about getting relief from summer resonates with me. I always loved to feel summer ending when I lived in NC. I still feel the same way, just not as profoundly, since summers are not nearly so hot here. But that association of fall with relief from the heat will always be with me. Also I used to just love the start of a new school year, buying books, supplies--new clothes that I mistakingly thought would make me into a "new" person that would be more confident, better liked.

All the changes of seasons, fall included, make me feel more alert and alive. Sometimes I get stuck in ruts, and a change of seasons reminds me that everything changes. MarianV #32 puts it well when she talks about the fallen leaves renewing the earth with their nutrients. Every change of seasons, in its own way, brings a renewal of life. Fall and winter are seasons for deep, inner renewal, while spring and summer are times for a big flush of outward growth.

Talbin, you're reminding me that the early Celts also considered fall (or winter, since they recognized only two seasons) as the beginning of the new year. For them, the "day" began at sundown, and the year at Samhain (Halloween) with the beginning of winter. The dark time when people slept and the winter time when the nights were long and seeds rested in the earth seemed like the real time of beginnings to them.

For the first time this Fall I heard brown leaves crunching under my feet as I walked a woodsy path.

I live in Arizona after a childhood spent in many small southern and Texas towns. I spent 25 years in the suburbs of Chicago and two years in the heart of downtown Chicago. I loved/hated all those places and seasons in various ways. The Chicago suburban years were wonderful, up to a point, We bought our first house, our little boy was so full of wonder, I planned and made my first garden, we always lived rental with my parents, no planting, we wouldn't be around to see it.

Fall was wonderful during that idyllic time. I planted bulbs and perennials and my son helped. He learned that beautiful things (plants) need nurture and some stress and to be fed and watered. I felt I was teaching him the cycle of life and relearning it myself every year.

I have to admit I do not like the cold. I truly am a daughter of the south, snow is to be looked at from inside, next to a nice fire, with a cup of hot cider in hand. It is a good time to hibernate and read. I have, and I hope my son has memories of the two of us lying on the couch, one at either end, reading for hours. We would stack some snacks and drinks on the coffee table and sink into our companionable literary pursuits. My husband never quite 'got it'. "How can you just read all day. You need to get out, get some exercise, breathe that good cold air." I used to offer him an aspirin and a cold cloth for his forehead! :-)

Spring is when it all begins again, except in Chicago Spring is sometimes two days long and sometimes it's winter one day and summer the next, around about the middle of June. Gardening there can be frustrating there, unless you learn to just accept that's the way it is. I learned to wait until late May to plant anything very tender. When I went to the nursery, I picked out hardy,'invasive' plants. When, as always happened, I lost plants, I turned the ground over and told the lost one, "enrich this soil so the next plant will have a better chance. For me gardening became a spiritual exercise.

Now I live in the Sonoran or 'green' desert. Contrary to what many people believe, there are seasons here. They are just subtle and you must stop and look to be aware. Yes the summers are miserably hot, but we never run our A/C below 78 degrees. Who wants to wear a sweater because of the cold, in July. We visit our son who lives in a cool clime during the hot time. I do my indoor crafting, painting, sewing, reading and writing. In the Fall, the temps start dropping, I go out early and trim back my somewhat neglected garden. I have an automatic watering system that does not fling water into the air. This is when I introduce new plants. I'm attempting to create a desert cottage garden, indigenous, hardy plants that survive in this area.
Then winter with it's fifty degree days and sunshine. This is when my husband and I go to the workshop and build and repair. We buy old furniture items, sometimes we pick them up on the side of the road. If they cannot be restored, we take them apart and I incorporate them into my art. But we are working together. I continue to putter about in the garden, there's always something needs to be done.

This is a long post, my point is, when you push the world away and look with calm eyes, you can see the season, see the reason and take comfort that, at least in your small space, it is as it should. Then, you can take that peace and joy out into the world and give something back.

Fall is now giving way to winter. In a northern climate, winter is a time to hunker down & survive. I am in the country witha lot of 2nd. growth woods & every day the air rings with the sounds of buzz-saws cuttin up firewood. All the boats have been pulled from the water & almost every house has a bright blue plastic covered boat sitting next to it. Some people string xmas lights around them. No more long evenings visiting neighbors on the patio. No more "partying" around camp fires.
I don't like driving after dark (Last year my daughter collided with a deer on her way home to Woodville, she wasn't hurt, but her car was. The deer managed to get away, although her friends searched for it.
So it's back inside our little cocoons, venturing out to put up X-mas decorations & telling our "sun-bird" neighbors "See you in the Spring."

Yes, winter is come to southern FL too... #41, I can relate to your beautiful long post so much. I grew up in Colorado where the seasons shift without warning and never apologize. I remember the days of gathering firewood, hanging out in a warm kitchen, and watching the snow pile up.

Here, the weather is hot and more hot, generally. But this past week, we had a cold front! (ah, it got down to the mid 50's... eek!) So now I'm wearing my sweater to go to the beach in the morning, but the water is still nice and warm. Down here we have to enjoy this brief coolness, it's all we get of winter. But it is glorious and I love it when we have a cool Thanksgiving (anything under 75 is welcome!) It sucks when we have to turn on the air conditioning because the turkey cooking in the oven made it too hot in the house!

#41 - the Sonoran desert near Tucson, AZ, is really beautiful! The cactus! They are so incredible.

I grew up in the hills about an hour and a half outside Melbourne, Australia. In this beautiful valley with tall treed temperate rainforest I knew both the extremes of winter and summer and the sublime months in between where everything that grew around us prepared for each change. This wondrous experience can't help but find it's way into all that I write. Not always in overt metaphor, but in fragrance and glance and mood. Or in shadow behind thought and voice.

Gray days, morning fog & evening drizzle. The middle of winter streches on into eternity. The days are blanks, clouds have made our sky their permament home; only now & then will they allow the sun to peak through. Boring weather. Cold enough for snowy mornings, but slush & mud by nightfall. A season to imagine being someplace else. My oldest daughter calls from Palm Springs CA. It's their tourist season, they wait for the Canadian "Snowbirds" to arrive & boost the economy. Bonnie works as a waitress, but this year, business is down. The economy is fragile, many houses & buildings wear "For Sale Repossed" signs. She is homesick for snow. I am homesick for sunshine. We talk about the candidates & wait for Spring.

Marian, that is a poem.