The Sensuality of Spring

[cedar_grove]

Time's a cheat, and cheats us all. Time, a thief,
steals from us all. Where does it keep
the years is has taken? Look, here is a man
who yesterday was just a boy. And look who looks
upon that man: who but Love herself, the goddess
Venus, woulnded by her son Cupid, a careless lad
who kissed his mother while he still wore his quiver,
scraping her white breast with his barbed arrows.
And what becomes of her? Love, in love, abandons
all her temples and her island sactuaries, even
hides from heaven, saying that her love is
more beautiful than heaven, more beautiful
that all the sea-ringed islands or rich mountain shrines
or even the voluptuous shade wherein she used to lie.
Love, in love, becomes a huntress, tucking up her robes
and running with bare feet across the rocky world.

--Ovid, Metamorphoses

As the snow melts and the days grow longer, as the buds swell upon the trees and catkins dangle from branches, our sensual selves expand and stretch.

Seeing spring in a new country has been... well... strange, but yes in a sensual kind of way. I realised this as I was thinking on this all through the day, and meditating on it later, and now as I am typing it up it is hitting me again, just how much difference the similarity contains.

Different flowers, none of which I knew the names of, are starting to bloom... I can tell it's spring, just by my nose - new pollen for my hay fever to play with, which is not a complaint, strangely enough. An observation, but a strangely curious one. Perhaps I should make an effort to find out what the flowers are called. Some of them certainly smell nice, pollen notwithstanding

There are different bird calls too, that are splitting the spring air, playing around my senses. I was coming back from taking something to a collegues house recently for example, and could hear an unfamiliar bird call. I couldn't for the life of me locate the bird to see what it was, so I have no idea, but here, as well as the sparrows (they seem to be everywhere), there are new birds to learn. Maybe I should see if I can find a place that has examples of their calls... but the biggest difference is being in a place where I can hear hawks - wild ones - calling. That reaches me on many different sensual levels. I wish I saw them as often as I can hear them.

And through the day - different sensations of different temperatures... ranging from really cold, through to moderately hot. I have to put 'moderately' because I'm constantly being told that 'you ain't felt nothing yet.' whenever I tell someone I'm hot. I'm aware that it gets hot in the desert, people... what I'm saying is it's already different from what I'm used to. Again, not complaining - (seems like people haven't cottoned on to the fact that I've shifted my attitude in some things) - just making a statement of fact.

Perhaps the one sense that isn't getting stimulated with the changing of the season is taste. I'm sure there are different foods available in different seasons, but in the supermarket, where I still do most of my shopping - not yet so confident as to venture to do too much in the souk right now - things seem the same year round. Perhaps as I come to feel even more confident I can go to the souk and see what might be there and might be seasonal, and try a new set of tastes. It's something to think about.