Something about spring, and recognising it
How do you recognise spring? Is it the weather, the surge of floral scents, the thinning of clothes or in the way your heart sways like an empty cage in the wind? Something about spring makes me anxious, something in the way our lips pucker up when we call its name, as if giving the world a kiss.
In the two hemispheres of the earth, as one half wakes from a deep slumber of winter, the other sheds a blanket of leaves preparing for the siesta. But the planet’s sleeping sequence means little to the people in the city, where the distinction between seasons is blurry. People simply engage in the unending sequence of falling asleep and waking up. Until one day, in a passing whim, they realize they need to put on more or less layers. But there is always that time of recognition, a vulnerable moment when your preoccupied senses unconditionally devote their full attention to an end of one time and the beginning of another.
Seasons are a constant, almost an only one, in this world where things come to existence and disappear before the first syllable of their name touches a solid wall, seasons sluggishly prepare their transformation over the course of months. It waits for no one, favours no region, simply partakes in a natural course of change.
A few weeks ago, I walked into spring on the way home, among the forest of apartments in the estate I pass by every day, few windows and verandas filled its quota of spring in an abundance of red flowers. In that time of recognition, I was handed by spring a moment of complete tenderness. Perhaps seasons exist to give the busy inhabitants in the fast-moving world an excuse to pay attention to the mediocre, unimportant details in life.
Sometimes, our obsessive need to appear presentable makes us curl up in our cocoons and refuse to face our imperfections. One day leads to another and you get to a point where you think that you have hidden in the darkness for too long that the exit has sealed shut, and you just feel like you can’t get started. If you are one of those stupefied souls hiding in the shadows, take this time of the year, let this season that summons every daunted seedling from beneath the soil, give you an excuse to do over again. Fall in love again, chase your dream again, remember, again, who you are.
So, how do you recognise spring?
Dear Anonymous passengers, My name is Haram, in Korean, it is a collage of the word ‘sky’ and ‘human’. Living in the city that doesn’t sleep, pause or linger I realised that we often come to neglect the crucial focuses of life, whether it be changes in our surroundings or growth in ourselves. At the beginning of this season, I felt an urgent need to create, so I made an attempt at it. It is amateurish, childish and overly abstract, but I hope it turns out to be an opening scene to my artistic endeavour. Comma, Haram
Go to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqJYeWGfWVKW6UirQr9agA if you want to watch the visualisation of this prose.
