May

I associate (Ma)y with (Ma)hler. Windows open, a cup of coffee, in bed, a record on, bright flashes of green pushing right up against my second floor bedroom window. I have mild synesthesia, and for me, Mahler’s music is green — so there’s a doubling and then tripling of associations. The ‘ma’ sound; the color green.

Life is no better or worse than our sensations; at the end of our lives, (all) we are are bundles of memory-associations; the sense of life is sensual. And since spring — or more particular May — is the richest, the most sensuous and sensual of seasons, I place extra emphasis on remembering it, savoring it, internalizing it, like a poem. I always think, ‘This is one less spring than I had the year before; and next year — it will be less by another spring still.’ The pagan demand for spring sacrifice, I think, partly comes from this sense of spring’s preciousness, its fleetingness; its contingency; the uncertainty about whether human nature deserves nature — whether we’ve earned the rebirth of nature.

I particularly love grayish warm but not rainy days like today; the air hangs heavier; the light brings out the deepness of the greens, which the brighter sunlight otherwise smothers. It is not impossible to believe that the evolution of human consciousness was just the earth’s way of seeing its only resplendent colors; we are quite possibly just nature’s frontal cortex, recognizing itself in the mirror.