It's the last Friday of April, and it's been a beautiful day. I was outside for a bit getting some coffee, and I didn't want to go back inside! But I have to study. I gave myself the privilege of taking a long walk last week, and the next few weeks I really need to buckle down and do everything I can to finish the semester well. Exciting stuff.
Speaking of that long walk, in my last post, I forgot to mention that I also spent some time in Rockefeller Center last week. I got to see Atlas. Atlas is a Titan in Greek mythology, and there is a gigantic sculpture of him at Rockefeller Center. The first time I saw him I was taking a long walk and stumbled upon him by accident. It was October of my freshman year, and I was exploring the city a bit and just happened to find him. I remembering thinking about the idea of having "the whole world on your shoulders" and imagining what that must feel like. I took a picture of him and told myself that I would definitely come back to "visit" again. Well, it's funny because I went back to Rockefeller Center a few times after that, but I never saw him again. It's not that I didn't want to. I just never seemed to find him. Then, last Friday, I stumbled upon him again. Just like that first time. He looked the same, as amazing and impressive as ever. But I was different. The first time I saw him, I was barely two months into college, trying to figure out how I fit into everything that was around me. A year and a half later, I'm still trying to figure that out, but I feel that I've grown so much since then. I've gotten to know myself so much better and New York so much better. It feels like yesterday standing in front of him for the first time, wondering what college had in store for me. It was all so exciting back then. It still is.
You should all go visit Atlas. He needs to be distracted from the tremendous weight that he carries. haha.
This past week, I got another interesting reminder of freshman year. This past Wednesday, I was walking on 68th street, and I think I was between 3rd and 2nd Avenue. I noticed these flowers on the ground, and I sort of stopped in my tracks because it had been more than a year since I had seen flowers like that. Last year, I went out with a bunch of friends to Central Park in late March. It was a gorgeous spring day and we passed by this tree that had these beautiful white and pink flowers. We all stopped to look at them, and I remember picking two of them off the tree. I had class right afterwards, so I took them with me, and I had them on my desk in class. I noticed that they quickly started to brown around the edges. I remember feeling guilty for plucking them off the tree. It's amazing how quickly life can leave an organism.
We've sort of had a wishy washy spring this year, and everything has only started blooming recently. When I saw these flowers this past week, it took me back to that day a year ago. I hadn't seen them since that day, and it was weird seeing them on the ground like that. I looked up to see the tree they had come from, but I couldn't find it. It was like they felt out of the sky. Immediately, I was transported back to that day: the sun, the laughter of friends, the beauty of the flowers, how easily they died.
I never looked up what kind of flowers they were. But I just did a quick Internet search, and they're from a saucer magnolia tree. The tree is a hybrid of two different Magnolia trees, and it is known for how early its flowers bloom.
For me, they are a symbol of the joys of the early days of spring. That time when winter is just fading away and spring is entering slowly but surely. They are a symbol of the renewal of nature; its ability to create such beautiful things after the harshness of the cold. They are also a symbol of the fragility of life. They remind me that beauty and nature are things that can't be contained. I plucked those flowers off the tree for essentially selfish reasons. I wanted to hold on to the happiness of that day. When I saw those flowers on the ground that day, I wanted to pick one up. To be transported back to that day last year. But for whatever reason, I didn't touch them. But I do want to go back and see them in Central Park before spring is over. There's nothing quite like them.
Spring is intoxicating, isn't it?
S.
Quote of the Week
“It is a very beautiful day. The woman looks around and thinks: 'there cannot ever have been a spring more beautiful than this. I did not know until now that clouds could be like this. I did not know that the sky is the sea and that clouds are the souls of happy ships, sunk long ago. I did not know that the wind could be tender, like hands as they caress - what did I know - until now?”
~ Unica Zürn
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