It is only July, but - after some clear Melbourne weather this week and seeing wattles and jonquils and fruit trees in blossom - Miss Eagle feels as though Spring is in the air. We Eurocentric people of the Southern Hemisphere still rely on the distinction of the Northern Hemisphere seasons turned upside down. So officially, Spring does not arrive here until September 1. Miss Eagle believes that we should pay more attention to our own environment not just in the Southern Hemisphere or in our own nation but in our own locality.
Miss Eagle thinks that if we were sufficiently in tune with our environment there would be a name for what is happening now. And for lots of other seasonal changes as well, seasonal changes that may not happen for a period of three months but may only last for three weeks or six weeks.
What would this present season be called? The Harbinger? Newness? Please let Miss Eagle know what you think.
The poem, Australian Spring, by Australia's leading suffragette and face-on-the-five-dollar note, Catherine Helen Spence, is from the State Library of South Australia and reminds us of the attitude of transplanted Europeans. Things have changed a century later - but not enough. Generally speaking, we Australians have not come to terms with our land. We have not paid sufficient attention to what it can tell us. In fact, let's ask ourselves if we are listening at all.
We are still seeing things through the eyes of elsewhere, not the eyes of the native born.
4 comments:
As soon as the Winter Solstice passes, and days start to get longer, many things start to grow, (or bud, or flower). It is a huge seasonal divide, which is not noticeable to Eurocentric, and insulated, urbanites. I think country people (and gardeners) might be more in touch with this than true city folk.
But the plants and animals know all about it (it is breeding season for Wombats). Presumably the Aboriginals would have been in tune with this seasonal sense of anticipation (I believe there are many different names for "seasons" in the NT, for example. But I don't know about this in the southern states.
I cannot come up with an "appropriate" name, just now. But something like the "return". What about the Italian historical term: "risorgimento" (resurgence)- it sounds better in Italian. It actually encompasses the sense of recovery, and the sense of passion and urgency which turns into the frenetic burst of growth with which we are familiar in Spring.
The more I think about that name, the more I like it - "risorgimento".
I am having a second attempt at a name for this in-between season. How about: "Anticipation"?
The American lady Peony growers go crazy about this time of the season, and refer to the plants "poking their little pink noses through the soil".
Noses??? Come on ladies, you can do better than that! But it is always the lady Peony growers who start to comment on it (except for me, you'll observe!).
There is a certain shyness on my part about publicly giving this bud the most appropriate name, which would definitely be gynaecological.
I cannot post an image here, so I have to resort to inviting people to my own blog page, to see this "clitoral" image: http://peonyden.blogspot.com
So, for all of these reasons, I like the term "Anticipation" for this season.
Anni posted a blog the other day called "As giddy as a baby on a swing" .
It turns out that this was a quote from a lyric from a Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical "State Fair". Here are the lyrics:
I'm as restless as a willow in a windstorm,
I'm as jumpy as a puppet on a string;
I'd say that I had Spring fever,
But I know it isn't Spring.
I am starry-eyed and vaguely discontented,
Like a nightingale without a song to sing;
Oh, why should I have Spring fever,
When it isn't even Spring?
I keep wishing I were somewhere else,
Walking down a strange new street,
Hearing words that I have never heard
From a girl I've yet to meet.
I'm as busy as a spider spinning daydreams,
I'm as giddy as a baby on a swing;
I haven't seen a crocus or a rosebud,
Or a robin on the wing,
But I feel so gay,
In a melancholy way,
That it might as well be Spring,
It might as well be Spring.
*****
I especially like the question:
Oh, why should I have Spring fever, When it isn't even Spring?
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