On new chapters
Spring temporalities and endless moments to bloom
For my birthday, my friend Elizabeth sent me a lovely paper-art card of bookshelves that reads, “Another chapter…”
We bibliophiles tend to think of our lives in terms of chapters. But this really does feel like a time of looking ahead to new experiences and adventures. I began a new editorial job last month in civic tech, and I’m continuing to work with academic writers and memoirists on developmental and line editing. I’m exploring my own creative practice after a busy fall that ended in a COVID winter, where I spent a chunk of time in bed writing haikus about the wallpaper.
It also feels like the perfect time to relaunch this newsletter, which offers a space to think about books and ecologies. I’m excited to share future posts with you on my favorite topics, from Dante to detective fiction, Gershwin lyrics to fado music, historical recipes to sustainable travel. And, as ever, illuminated manuscripts.
We’re on the cusp of a season that we associate with new beginnings, with returning hyacinths or unruly forsythia. With new chapters.
Spring, though, happens across many dimensions and ways of being, holds many temporalities and times.
As I walk through our local nature preserve, I notice not only the cherry blossoms but also the trees yet to bud. A cracked chestnut burr pressed into the red mud or shriveled berries still on branches from the fall. Perennials with their long memory. The geological time of dirt and detritus. To my untrained eyes, it’s not clear which trees will return and which won’t. That’s the essence of spring as well, that blend of sureties and uncertainties.
Everywhere I’ve lived, spring has shown a different face. The chilled-but-resolute daffodils in Boston. The lavender showers of jacarandas in Los Angeles. Endless blossoms in the Blue Ridge. And in my heart of hearts, spring is always signaled by the trade winds off the Atlantic and strong surf in the Caribbean.
This is a time layered with as-yet unseen blooms, with benedictions and blessings, with partings and empty spaces. New beginnings are often endings as well, containing their own shedding and seeds and sorrows.
One of my favorite poems, Mary Oliver’s “Hurricane,” describes new blossoms that appear after a storm, concluding that, “For some things / there are no wrong seasons.”
Not all blooms happen at once, or on-time, or in pastels—just as not all springs are without their chills. Any moment can hold within it (as Wordsworth wrote) “A host of golden daffodils” that “flash upon the inward eye.”
Whether spring comes to you this year with hope or grief, shedding or growing, wind or calm, I wish you moments of peace and lightness in the weeks ahead, and many more unlooked-for seasons of spring beyond that.
May you have good luck and warmth on this brisk and sunny St. Patrick’s Day.
Love that Mary Oliver poem - what a gift her work continues to be. Hope you enjoyed the soda bread too! :)