The thing about spring is that you’re never aware of its arrival; it’s only when the sunlight feels less ephemeral and more eternal (though that may be daylight savings), that you realize that the frost of winter has finally thawed. Suddenly, you have eight months of being alive again, until the blue gray melancholy seeps into your bones, casting shadows that are almost as long as the endless days in which the sun dips below the horizon as early as four in the afternoon. The brisk air begins to refresh rather than bite.
Spring doesn’t typically show her face on the first day. Yes, a flower or two might rise, but first the sky must open to soak the Earth with a life-giving substance, water. The rain periodically sequesters us inside to sit, to dream, to slowly absorb that wonderful, long-awaited feeling of inconspicuous change while the world is washed clean and born anew.
Winter, by contrast, is marked by its colorlessness, from the gray nights to the blinding white glares of the snow. It focuses you to retreat inwards, seeking a semblance of life from within. It’s selfish in that regard; the cold and darkness will puppeteer you into wallowing, stretching moments into millennia between each second. I think that’s why the incandescence of spring has always felt too brief for me, especially because I rarely recognize springtime until it’s four months into the year and the hourglass is nearly empty when I am done dealing with winter’s stubborn aftereffects. A signifier that I have come out of my winter hibernation is when I turn my thoughts inside out and start thinking about the people around me—what I mean to them, and what they mean to me in return.
Spring is thus the most reflective and romantic time of the year to me, though sadly it’s not my favorite season (that title belongs to winter despite me badgering it at the moment). Though I can see why it might be others’ favorite season: winter is too cold, summer is too hot and fall can get a bit too cozy. The pre-summer warmth filtering through the windows almost feels like it’s awakening me from my bona fide winter hibernation, and I finally creep out of my hermit shell just as winter removes its stubborn clutch. My March is always filled with mornings outside and weekend brunches with friends, in tandem with early sunrises and nature reawakening in pastel brushstrokes (spring always reignites my passion to paint, though I have to admit that I’m not very good).
I keep myself busy because it is the only way to shed the winter blues. Sometimes, the feeling lingers all the way into May, which feels like something bitter leaving an aftertaste in my mouth. Most of the things I am looking forward to this season are just resetting my life and recovering from junior year third quarter, because no matter how much you feel prepared for it, it will still be awful. I want to rewire my body not be anxious every time it feels like my head feels weird and not feel physically winded from just getting up in the morning. My body’s adapted to a system of constantly being on high alert, and it’s so exhausting. Focusing on my mental health is the most imperative thing on the agenda—sleeping properly, focusing more, eating correctly.
Moreover, just reading, watching and listening to things that awaken my brain keeps my will to continue going to school alive. For this list of season’s listens, reads and watches, I am focusing on a few key adjectives: introspective without being too bleak, warm, beautiful prose and cinematography, meditative and self-help-y in a not actually self-help way. So here’s my little mini guide.
LISTENS
To be honest, this playlist is a mess. The songs don’t quite work together and some of them feel widely off from the topic. I hoped to have a playlist that was full of music that sounds beautiful and optimistic and sunny. But I like this one, too, even if it makes no sense. It’s full of the songs that called to me when I thought of spring so there has got to be some theme.
READS
Anything Jane Austen…but we all already knew that. For spring reading I try to focus on things that feel light and are best to read outside, on a day drenched in sunlight. Nothing too dark or atmospheric—any classics on provincial life, slice-of-life contemporary fiction and children’s classics are my priority during springtime. My birthday falls during spring, so I also gravitate towards meditative nonfiction books that hopefully contribute to and even change the way I see the world because very good books do that just a little bit. Also, please note that some of these I have not read yet but are on my reading list for this season.
“Pond” by Claire-Louise Bennet
“Flush” by Virginia Wolf
“The Book of Goose” by Yiyun Li
“Love” by Toni Morrison
“Delayed Rays of a Star” by Amanda Lee Koe
“Selected Essays: 1934-1943” by Simone Weil
“William Blake and the Sea of Monsters and Love” by Philip Hoare
“Acqua Viva” by Clarice Lispector
I have also decided to include some articles that I have yet to read but are on my list.
How Jane Austen Pulled It Off: On Emma
The Darkness from the Darkness
What Perfume Reveals to Us About Power
WATCHES
This year, I want to shed the idea that spring should only be about pastel hues and lightheartedness. I want to focus on quiet (ish) and reflective movies that are good to put on while winding down for the night.
“Pride and Prejudice” (2005)
“In the Mood for Love”
“Petite Mamman”
“John Berger’s Ways of Seeing”
“A Tale of Springtime”
“Little Forest”
“Drop Dead Gorgeous”
“Perfect Days”
“The Beguiled”
“Shanghai Express”
“The Red Shoes”
“Women and the Wind”
