Kurt Vonnegut
said that if you stop looking at the heavens, and keep your eyes here on earth,
you’ll find there are six seasons, no matter what the solstices and equinoxes
and all those things I’m not quite clear on say. He’s close to right. I’m here
to add my own two seasons (while renaming his extra two seasons) giving us a nice
round infinity-on-its-side number of seasons: 8.
This is the
most bang for your buck available. Eight (count ‘em, eight) seasons.
***
Spring clearly
is May and June. That’s when flowers flower. That’s when spring springs. (April
showers bring May flowers in...duh...May, of course, with perhaps a few eager
buds at the tail end of April, certainly not as early as March 21).
As for summer?
Even if the pool opens on Memorial Day, it’s not really warm enough ‘til July.
Summer is July
and most of August.
But not all of
August. The second half of August is one of the two short seasons, my own
invention. It lasts two weeks, and is kind of an emotional onamonapia: The Poignant Season. If you’ve lived
where I’ve lived, the last half of August seems...sad. It’s not quite summer
anymore. The days are already getting shorter. You can see leaves beginning to
change, and feel cool breezes by the pool.
Pencils and
notebooks for school are on sale in the stores.
Fall, then, has
already started on September 1st, and lasts ‘til 31st
October. Falling leaves and pumpkins = fall.
By November,
however, the leaves are not falling,
they’ve fallen. Same with my mood. Everything is dark and
wet. Kurt Vonnegut calls this season “Locking”. It has a practical and
hard-nosed ring, but is still too metaphorical for me. Fallen says it best. (Or perhaps Despair, to be more emotionally onomonopia-ish.)
What’s next?
Christmas Season!
Christmas
Season starts, we’ll say, on the 24th of December, after the last
shop has shut its shutters. All those things that looked like Christmas before this weren’t Christmas, just a vulgar simulacrum. Shopping and sales are
the enemy of the real Christmas spirit, afterall. What could be darker than
that? Consumerism Gone Wild ≠ Christmas.
I extend
Christmas through January 6th, which, in the most drawn out western tradition
is the twelfth day of Christmas, thus giving the most bang for the buck.
(Episcopalians say it’s over on January 5, but they’re no fun – unless you like
lime green golf pants and martinis. And who likes those? Not even Episcopalians.)
Winter,
therefore, is 7 January through February.
Snow snow snow
snow snow snow snow.
And darkness.
Careful if you have Seasonal Affective Disorder, so named to give it the
lachrymose acronym SAD.
But of course,
it’s not SAD. It’s WAD.
It’s winter
affective disorder. You don’t get SAD in the summer.
It’s not
seasonal, it’s winteral.
Duh.
***
What’s next?
People say, as
winter ends, “we’re getting more winter weather.” Every year they say
that. Why? Because, guess what, it’s not spring. Which reminds me of George
Bush II standing on that ship saying the war was over, as bombs bombed and guns
gunned just over the bow, four score miles away, give or take. Calling something something doesn’t make it something, no matter how pepped
up you are.
It’s as
fundamentally misguided to say war is over when it’s not as it is to scream
“It’s spring, damnit it” at the unblinking eyes of a snowman. It’s still not
warm enough for Mr. Snowman to shed a tear, at least some places.
Brrrr.
March and
April, though, are not really winter.
Sprouts are already sprouting, even if flowers are not yet flowering. Yet
“Unlocking”, Kurt Vonnegut’s name, is too utilitarian, too mechanical.
Anticipation, I say. You can already imagine summer coming. You can feel
spring, just around the corner. But it’s not here yet.
***
So: Spring (May and June), Summer (July and the first half
of August), The Poignant Season (the last half of August), Fall (September and
October), Fallen/Despair (November through December 24th,
but only after the last shopper's stopped shopping), Christmas Season (December
24st, late-ish, - January 6th),
Winter (January 7th-February
28/9), and Anticipation (March and April).
More
complicated than the old system, but more honest.
Like great
uncle George.
Austin
Washington is the author of the almost eponymous The
Education of George Washington, which looks at George Washington in
a brand new way, too, if a bit better researched than this slap-dash bit of
hyperbolic (yet weirdly insightful) fluff. Join, in an almost spiritual way, here: Ici, UC?
