Iriem

I admit I've never liked the spring before. I can't say exactly why, though there are certain images associated with that word -- wet and heavy days, full of mud and sickly yellow-green shoots and humid gray skies. Maybe there's some brighter days in the mix -- but those aren't much better. For one reason or another, I've always dreaded the approach of that season. And the sickly gushing joy that everyone seems to derive from it.

So am I recanting my heresy? No. Not a bit. I still detest that obsession with "rebirth" and "renewal" and whatever other cockamamie things people say (as they put on their sunhats and start planting bulbs in muddy gardens). Whatever this is up in Michigan now, I don't know. But it's not "spring." To associate it what that word is an abuse of any aesthetic principle.

So I'm going to call it "Iriem." Or "Tavel" or "Ardel" or something else; I haven't exactly decided yet. But not "spring."

Iriem is the Indian Summer of the early months. Not in the fact that it's "warm," per se. But more in the fact that it is sudden, unexpected, and absolutely beautiful. If Indian Summer is a breathtakingly warm bit of summer in the fall, Iriem is a breathtakingly cool bit of summer in the spring.

It comes on you wholly unexpectedly. Maybe one day of transition, maybe even not that much. One day you're huddling off to classes in your hooded coat, trying to stay out of the icy mix of snow and rain. Two days later you are sunbathing on the lawn in form of your dorm. After the 3rd and 4th day and 5th days, you realize this isn't some freakish March week. It's here to stay.

Every moment of Iriem is heightened and beautiful. Evening and morning are cool (though not chilled). The sun is warm. Midday is almost hot. Perhaps it's the rapid heights and valleys of temperature that throw everything into such sharp relief. The wind. The prickling grass. The brilliant sun. The bark of the trees. Conversations flitting across the quad.

I never feel that I have to be outside on these days. I've still the winter habit and inclination of holing up inside. But once I go out, I can't come back in. A breeze hits me. I'll realize the sun's there, and I'll see groups of students flopped on the grass around the quad. Or it will be evening, and I'll stumble into an unnaturally light and bright grey night.

It's not exactly "overwhelming" or "overpowering." It's more silent than that. But there's a feel of something heightened, something beautiful in it that catches the senses. It's causing me, at least, who usually rushes frantically from class to class, to stop and linger a moment. To take in the yellow of a leaf, or the shadow of a telephone pole, or the bare twigs of a tree. And seeing them, to be able to do nothing but throw my head back, and say, "Dear God -- to live in a world where such things are possible."