new years, cruel months

"last year at this time we were crushed by a snowstorm; the streets were swollen with snow for days, but it was ok, no one was really going anywhere anyway.

right now we're having a bit of a thaw..."

its january. its january, 2006, in buffalo -- and it looks like spring. the forty-degree air has eaten away at the wayward curbside mounds of lingering snow, now dirty and scorched by the hot breath of wet street traffic. all around, matted grass seems to be struggling for life, reaching for the promise of the cottony grey skies overhead. it is like the opening of the Canterbury Tales, and of The Wasteland...

it is a tease, of course. we still have the rest of winter to ride out. which is why the comparison to The Wasteland is appropriate. yet i can't help but think: the sun is returning now, and while winter has only officially been with us for twelve days, why couldn't this thaw just continue into official spring, and why can it not officially introduce us to summer? for meterological reasons that i officially don't understand for one. that's ok. i know better than to hold the fickle weather to a promise it never kept, and i don't need doppler radar to tell me we've still got at least one or two big snows left before winter truly breaks. but an early start for spring would be nice, not just for the fact that we could all avoid a wind chill factor that is so excruciating that it is 99% effective as a birth control and 100% effective as a means of suicide.

it would be nice, simply because it would be appropriate: this is the new year. i want spring now. i want to grab the new year by green and growing things, to wrap them around me, to bath in such liquour as the rain, to mix the dried tubers with my bare hands: i want the blessing of green and growing life for my pilgrimage through this next year. an early start to spring would be nice because i just cannot wait out the length of four months without it and everything it represents. i need that life. i need it now. what better time to have it?

i can't help but thinking of this new year's as tidying several seasonal and calendrical milestones together: it is, of course, the new year, the time for new beginings. it is also the uncanny spring, a time for growth and renewal, a time for anticipating regeneration, resurrection. and, as i think about the death of the old year, and looking forward, clutching to the hope that the symbols of spring and the new year offer us, it is a Groundhog Day, a Candlemas of sorts...and while all my life i have abhored any acknowledgement that the rodent in punxatawney was my namesake, i can't help but see significance in the tradition of Groundhog Day and how it is appropriate here...

as a kid i was confounded by the tradition: the groundhog seeing his shadow in the sun just never added up to six more weeks of winter for me (and yes, i know that there is always six weeks of winter left by the time we get to february 2nd, but still...) -- shouldn't the sun be an indication that spring was hurrying on its way? what was always more significant to me about Groundhog Day was that when the world is enshrouded with darkness and winter, everything is in shadow.

Candlemas lore holds that the groundhog, being afraid of his shadow, scurries back into his hole to wait out the next six weeks. i am waiting for the groundhog who can confront his shadow, who can grab the untimely sun by its rays and pull us into spring. to go back in the hole is to go back to winter, back to the dead year, back to the tomb of old Kronos. somewhere there's got to be a hero groundhog who isn't afraid of the new year, of spring, of neither sun nor shadow, who can march headlong into it and bring it back for the rest of us. maybe then i wouldn't mind sharing my name with such creature.

the cruelty of april is the cowardice of february, is the fear and trepidation of the new year. and right now is the new year -- and right now i am looking ahead to a time of greener pastures -- and right now i am grabbing spring by its teasing vernal shoots. i have too much to lose to let winter linger.

as much as i hate that much of my writing on this blog seems to be getting more and more inspirational, i just as equally can't help it. i want big things to happen with my life; i need to have them happen in my life...and writing is the only way i can get there. still, the dry and sterile thunderclouds only lasted for so long...and in the end the thunder spoke, so i suppose i shouldn't feel so bad.