i don't love anything enough
except, perhaps, spring— it’s a sisyphean endeavor, but that’s the essence, isn’t it?
spring has arrived and spring is the psyche that guides the soul to life, to rebirth. i treat spring like nastenka, and i have written her name more times than my own. spring is engraved on my ribcage, scrawled like amateur but trying calligraphy on the waves of my brain. spring is the only thing i could ever come close to worshipping, and how could i not? all that i’ve ever sought was this indiscernible desire for some form of metamorphosis, one that only spring seems to act as a catalyst for. spring, with her budding apple blossoms! her whimsical, winding breeze that churns caprice within me! it’s impossible for me to relay the enormity of spring, and i think that is part of her beauty. the incomprehensibility. otherwise, she would not be divine. she is simultaneously simple and complex. spring is love, the center of everything. she is a revolution. the ceaseless spiral.
sixteen years of floating about life hasn’t always felt wrong. there were days where the unknown of tomorrow brought a sense of fervor, that my leisurely manner of going about life was something to be celebrated. i never thought that i was purposeless in the way that some do and yet embody joy anyway— i had my art, my writing, and my mind— which i thought was precious. but as the years pass, maturity approaches. seriousness. stoicism. now what used to be carefree living is something i must hang on the wall and forget about while everything moves fast— not in the arousing, exciting way— but rushed and hurried every moment to get something done. such a milestone surely deserves questions as big as the problems life will certainly dare to dole out at me. everyone asks me, audrey, what will you be? what will you do? i ask myself, audrey, why are you here? why do you live?
and i always think i have the answer— to create, of course, to be an artist in every way. to make friends, make an impact, be the love where there is a deficiency. but these motives to get up every day seem insignificant to me now. they are important, no, i could not live life without them, but what is it for? why does the impact i make matter? why does it matter to create art? for whom am i doing this?
just a few days ago i read this lovely piece by Sherry Ning,
which expounded on the essence of humanity being an appetite— a desire— for what you love.
and what do i love? what do i orient myself towards?
i have no response, unless an aching silence qualifies.
even with all of the love i have for every little thing in my life, its magnetism is feeble and pulls me, lightly, in all sorts of directions. so i move nowhere as all of these desires cancel out. i’m looking for a god, it seems, and i have yet to find one as significant as a god should be— though spring seems to draw me towards a real, visceral life more than anything else.
not spring as simply a season, not as a mere change in environment. spring is a revolution, my dear friend, the act of it. spring is not just the flowering of hyacinths. spring is becoming. spring is not being, which implies a state of stagnation, but the essence of change.
shyam wrote this beautiful letter, this staggering letter to their lover,
one that i return to like a book i’ve read a hundred times. the prose in this piece is open, raw and vulnerable with its blatant veneration. it is golden with love, love that is written in the fibers of reality itself and love that burns, wonderfully. i marvel at such adoration. i wonder why there is nothing and no one i can speak or write about with such reverence— why there is nothing holy enough for me.
for a while i was content with being the sugar someone uses to sweeten their tea. that was what i thought was my calling, to be the sweet, sweet anchor in a sea of the world’s overwhelming suffering and embrace the twee, nonsensical lightness of life. but it is shallow, and i find myself yearning for that which is less sugary and comforting and more passionate. i yearn for something that embodies the intensity of life. i wrote this a year ago:
and even now it still holds true. now that the spring equinox has passed, i feel the fervent urge spring incites in me to chase it down and try to capture it somehow. i know it will evade my hands like a swerving butterfly, or a particularly agile rabbit. though it seems so, i do not love the butterfly-rabbit. it is not the butterfly nor the rabbit that i find fulfills my appetite for intensity and something to worship. it is the chase, the becoming. and i hope to spend this spring out of breath with how wildly i will be pursuing spring, sucking the marrow out of life as it encourages me to.
what a beautiful, and relatable piece. i also sometimes feel like i am not loving -- or appreciating -- anything enough. it is what i try to do through writing. your love and awe for spring is admirable!