Natural metaphors

[BlackShanglan]

Spring, and the grape vine is coming into leaf.

One sees why Christ made it such a central image to his teachings. This thing, dead to all sight, even to I who had cut it back a week past and seen the green quick in it, looked as lifeless as an old dead stick. Yet today there are buds already opening into leaves.

One can but wonder.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Nothing like that here. Here, the early spring days are bright and cold and brittle as glass. It really is a cruel time of year: the light is cruel, the cold is cruel, and when it gets dark, the darkness is cruel too, sharp and stubborn and greedy.

There's a reason this is the sign of the Fishes, sign of the deep, a water sign, cold and wet.

But next comes the Ram, a fire sign, as earthborn and springtime an animal as you can find. Just have to hold on till then.

 

[logophile]

Nothing like that here. Here, the early spring days are bright and cold and brittle as glass. It really is a cruel time of year: the light is cruel, the cold is cruel, and when it gets dark, the darkness is cruel too, sharp and stubborn and greedy.

I am so sick of this winter. I like living in an area with seasons, but this one has me finished. Sunday was beautiful. High in the fifties, sunshine, new smells. Today is so cold that it hurts my skin and my lungs everytime I walk out the door. I need spring.

 

[minsue]

Nothing like that here. Here, the early spring days are bright and cold and brittle as glass. It really is a cruel time of year: the light is cruel, the cold is cruel, and when it gets dark, the darkness is cruel too, sharp and stubborn and greedy.

There's a reason this is the sign of the Fishes, sign of the deep, a water sign, cold and wet.

But next comes the Ram, a fire sign, as earthborn and springtime an animal as you can find. Just have to hold on till then.

Here, I already have the A/C on. This does not bode well...

 

[impressive]

But next comes the Ram, a fire sign, as earthborn and springtime an animal as you can find. Just have to hold on till then.

My sign. My season. The season of optimism and hope and passion. Bring it on!

 

[CharleyH]

Spring, and the grape vine is coming into leaf.

One sees why Christ made it such a central image to his teachings. This thing, dead to all sight, even to I who had cut it back a week past and seen the green quick in it, looked as lifeless as an old dead stick. Yet today there are buds already opening into leaves.

One can but wonder.

It is an easy symbol, though conventional. Is it not?

 

[Softouch911]

At dawn the sun is near the pine tree it passes each spring and fall. This morning, on the lake new ripples of snow moved southeast slowly in the wind. The snowspray the cold wind blew had lowered the temperature to 7 degrees (F) and no one was out. No one could be out except Dr. Zhivago. I don't know about nature, but I sure wept: Siberian weather and purple prose.


Softie -- gagging on detritus

 

[Huckleman2000]

Spring, and the grape vine is coming into leaf.

One sees why Christ made it such a central image to his teachings. This thing, dead to all sight, even to I who had cut it back a week past and seen the green quick in it, looked as lifeless as an old dead stick. Yet today there are buds already opening into leaves.

One can but wonder.

Ain't that the truth! I had one of those, took me three years to kill the damn thing! I sold the house in the winter 10 years ago, and I bet the new owner is still lopping that vine every April.

Grapes belong in wineyards, not gardens!

<affects curmudgeonly pose and raises a stemmed glass to his lips>

 

[Dar~]

A barren brown flatland is what greets the eyes when I look out from my window. Spring is come and no sign of life but the barest gleam of new green on the branches of the tree in my yard. Tumble weeds abound and the little brown pockets that held safe the new growth of the ash trees litter my covered carport. Leaves left from autumn's celebration drift in the bottom of my daughter's sandbox. Though the sun shines brightly, the air still has that scent of crisp newness. I eagerly await the dawn of summer and the flavor of warmth around me.

 

[BlackShanglan]

It is an easy symbol though, conventional. Is it not?

If written, yes. When growing - never.

 

[English Lady]

Daffodils. I adore them and everywhere i go now I can see them.

"Spring is here." their yellow trumpets announce "New life! Make way for New Life!"


Forgive me for going on a little trip down memory lane, but I used to go on a catholic retreat every Easter, and as part of it we would "do" the passion. One year they ploaced the crucifixion scene within a small hdden glade littered with crocuses and daffodils and snow drops. The whole scene was made more poignant by the presence of them.

Another time it was a very mild winter and as such there was an excess of flowers and foliage in the grounds. We used so much greenery and daffodils to decorate the plain wooden cross for the Easter Mass. You could just glimpse the harsh wood under the mesh of vine like greenery. It looked like the cross was a living tree. Beautiful and powerful.

I adore the spring. I adore Easter.

 

[cantdog]

Easter is two weeks away, and yet it was seventeen below zero(C) this morning with snowbanks as high as a boy.

 

[Guest]

this time of year is usually very difficult for me. i dont know if it is because its when i noticed how frail my father was before he died...or if its the transition between summer and winter...

spring in ct is usually not very pretty until its nearly over...slushy, messy...whore-ish snowfall that is so much different from winter's virginal insulation.

 

[neonlyte]

They lopped the crowns of the trees over the winter in the park opposite my windows flooding the apartment with cold winter light. They spared a tree directly opposite, from the sycamore family I think, it has burst into bud this last week, green flowers trailing pollen dusted tentacles like baby green squid caught in the branches. Leaves will follow in a week or so, and the birds will have somewhere to hide. It's been a long winter for Southern European climes, dry as a bone, the interior still scorched from last year's sun and lacking the verdant flush of the onset of spring. There will be bad fires this year, few men now work the forests to clear the detritus of last season. Lives will be lost, homes destroyed. There's pain coming, we need rain.

 

[impressive]

They lopped the crowns of the trees over the winter in the park opposite my windows flooding the apartment with cold winter light. They spared a tree directly opposite, from the sycamore family I think, it has burst into bud this last week, green flowers trailing pollen dusted tentacles like baby green squid caught in the branches. Leaves will follow in a week or so, and the birds will have somewhere to hide. It's been a long winter for Southern European climes, dry as a bone, the interior still scorched from last year's sun and lacking the verdant flush of the onset of spring. There will be bad fires this year, few men now work the forests to clear the detritus of last season. Lives will be lost, homes destroyed. There's pain coming, we need rain.

What wonderful imagery here, neon! TY

 

[neonlyte]

What wonderful imagery here, neon! TY

*blushes*

 

[BlackShanglan]

Beautiful posts all round.

 

[Dar~]

[thread hijckack]Hey Shanglan. Hows it going?[/thread hijack]

 

[BlackShanglan]

[thread hijckack]Hey Shanglan. Hows it going?[/thread hijack]

Sorry, I was off making waffles. It's not really a day off until I've had waffles. They're a metaphor for, um ... crispy square things with little squares in them.

 

[neonlyte]

Never give up, never despair, never think your voice doesn't count...

It's raining!

 

[cantdog]

voice doesn't count

I know how to bring the rain;
I used to dance for NBC! ---Leon Redbone, Back Home in Alcatraz

 

[gauchecritic]

It's an ugly town. A dirty, gritty northern town. Peopled with dirty, gritty denizens. All the more dirty because I remember when that conglomoration of boxes with their 2.4 children occupants was a green sward, drowned and iced in winter for school children's especial delight to dare how far they would before it broke and sent them home on hurtling blue toes.

An acquaintance asked what do you do for excitement? I tried to explain about the sunset. When Poussin and Constable would paint the lowering evening for my personal view and raptured delight. She didn't understand.

Then later I remembered what I could only have shown when I had fleetingly glimpsed homeward at that hour at that time of year so that she would know.
The very ugliest building in the town. The very modernest, built on the grave of the very oldest (that which they murdered by neglect). Its unblinking row of light reflective covering masking the windows, making it eyeless (not in gaza for it would surely have been rent)

But there, on that dirtiest of gritty buildings, at this time, in this season, that one building alone, in every one of its unseeing eyes it had dressed itself, in small reflective squares the very colour of the quick blood from the dying sun

 

[Guest]

It's an ugly town. A dirty, gritty northern town. Peopled with dirty, gritty denizens. All the more dirty because I remember when that conglomoration of boxes with their 2.4 children occupants was a green sward, drowned and iced in winter for school children's especial delight to dare how far they would before it broke and sent them home on hurtling blue toes.

An acquaintance asked what do you do for excitement? I tried to explain about the sunset. When Poussin and Constable would paint the lowering evening for my personal view and raptured delight. She didn't understand.

Then later I remembered what I could only have shown when I had fleetingly glimpsed homeward at that hour at that time of year so that she would know.
The very ugliest building in the town. The very modernest, built on the grave of the very oldest (that which they murdered by neglect). Its unblinking row of light reflective covering masking the windows, making it eyeless (not in gaza for it would surely have been rent)

But there, on that dirtiest of gritty buildings, at this time, in this season, that one building alone, in every one of its unseeing eyes it had dressed itself, in small reflective squares the very colour of the quick blood from the dying sun

Stunning and spot on. Quite chilling, too. Thank you.

 

[English Lady]

Wow Gauche. Stunning!

 

[neonlyte]

Bravo Gauche.

I see it.