Yesterday was the first day of spring. For the first time since I left a month and a half ago, I miss Vancouver. Unlike the rest of Canada where the adage about April showers and May flowers rings true, March brings the first relief from months of rain and fog. I felt most content in spring. The despondency of winter only hit me when the rain fell; the breeze warded off the heavy restlessness of summer.
In spring I set off to beautifully unremarkable places just to remind myself that I could. I went to Greater Mission Squamish Reserve in North Vancouver and took photos from the peripheries. I visited a boy I loved in Victoria and drank until I cried on Douglas Street. I listened to “Townie” by Mitski and felt something that was indistinct and good. (“Drunk Walk Home” reverberates with the weight of July’s heat.) I thought the trees in full bloom turned West 7th to the prettiest street in the world. I checked out CDs from the Vancouver Public Library and listened to them on my apartment’s sagging balcony, looking out onto the stinking alley I loved like it was mine.
Now that I’m away from it, preparing for fall in the opposite hemisphere, I remember how spring felt. It was raw with potential and nerves exposed. I was beat by winter and months of pursuing landmark goals: finishing a degree, establishing a career, finding the next love of my life and other such shit. Whereas in winter I was all stress and perspiration by early nightfall, in spring I found stillness in the last light of a day growing steadily longer. I sat in Jonathon Rogers Park and felt a hush.
Melbourne’s fall comes with rain and fog. To transition from winter to fall – with a few weeks’ Australian summer in between – means I’m missing the time of year that made me feel the most hopeful. I feel like I’m stuck in the endless pursuit of accomplishment. I oscillate between giving no fucks and giving all the fucks in the world, an indeterminate state that feels like the first whispers of resignation. Now I have to find my own relief in a country without the seasonal signifier I knew and the feelings they cyclically evoked. I must find my own contentment and stillness. But after trudging through winter, all I want is the first lightness of spring.
Song of the day: “Townie” by Mitski
