Transformation

“You can pick all the flowers but you can’t stop the spring.”—Pablo Neruda

I love this quote for its signaling not only of the return of spring, but of the irrepressibility of spring; and for its deft summation of the human spirit and our capacity to live.


I came to Prospect Park when my friend died in December, and I remember walking along the path and seeing the landscape; so open, and so utterly bleak. The sky was grey, the scrubby grass was grey, and everything felt black.


I stood at the top of a hill and looked out and wanted to talk to my friend and couldn’t say his name out loud without crying. I remember it felt like I was bleeding into a river. As strange as it may sound, that’s how I felt.


At the same time, as I looked out, I had a clear, very plain sense that I knew that the world would renew and that spring would come; even as everything felt so very sad and lost.


I went back to the park many times over the winter. It snowed a lot. Everything felt very cold and I hoped that the buried things were germinating and that the unasked for, uncontrollable pause of winter was somehow necessary—to my recovery, just as I knew it was essential to nature’s health.


And then I went to the park today. A couple of days after the spring equinox and the new moon; a couple of days into a new season. And my God did it feel that way. The grass still scrubby but willing to straighten itself out—like a person with hat-hair. The birds beginning to cheep. Humans sitting on benches with their eyes shut and the sun on their faces.


And I felt… nice. The cells in my body felt good with the warm sun shining on them. My cheeks felt good to feel the wind brushing them, all freshness and new chill. My heart felt peaceful, and stirring with the beginnings of curiosity—like a little crocus pushing its head up through the cold earth.


Looking out at the same wide open scene and feeling these things, I thought, What’s changed? What imperceptible tiny things have moved and shifted to found something new? What has cracked to allow for a dazzling, slender chink of possibility to shine through?


You can use time-lapse photography to see precisely what goes on in nature, through the seasons’ transitions. But even though you can observe the action unfolding, the mystery of it all remains intact. We even have time lapse photography to watch the development of embryos in utero. We can watch the growth of a new life, stage by stage—and its mystery is totally undiminished, its miraculousness is even magnified.


So, I don’t seek an explanation for these transformations, right now. It is simply reassuring to feel myself a part of nature. To grieve and rest and breathe; and come out into the sun again.




I am grateful to the Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield for the Pablo Neruda quote, as cited in his excellent book A Lamp in the Darkness.