You are sown in order to blossom again.
The Lord of the harvest goes forth
and gathers us in sheaves
when we have died. *

What awaited me at the very end of March were the last breaths of winter, persistently attempting to overpower the burst of cherry blossom with a flood of cold caressing cotton balls. At the same time Mahler’s symphony no.2, AKA “Die Auferstehung” (Resurrection) is playing, and I am wearing the first mod I’ve created for “In A Station of the Metro”. Interestingly, both perfume and music were inspired by a poem. One is longish, the other very short as you may know.

The great Romantics of the late 19th century were not merely death obsessed; they saw death as a positive thing, mulling over concepts that perhaps before were more prevalent in the East, such as incarnation, the rise of spirit above matter and so on. I am not particularly inclined to connote Spring with death, but through the lessons of life, I’ve learned that spring is not always just sunny daffodils and birthday parties. Early spring is a time of struggle, a battle fought wearing coat of arms made from bursts of showy flowers. While to some, waking up in the morning is an appealing and easy task, the rise from near-death sleep (or a dark Winter hibernation, for that matter) takes a lot of energy, and we may need all the flowers we can get to get out of this death-bed.

* “Wieder aufzublueh’n wirst du gesat!
Der Herr der Erhnte geht
und sammelt Garben
uns ein, die starben!” (from “ Die Auferstehung” by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, translated by a mysterious translator who works for Decca record label, and copied from the pamphlet accompanying the 1975 recording Zubin Mehta & Wiener Philharmoniker and soloists Christa Ludwig and Ileana Cortrubas)