‘Love is a myth,’ Grandfather Trout said. ‘Like summer.’
‘What?’
‘In winter,’ Grandfather Trout said, ‘summer is a myth. A report, a rumor. Not to be believed in. Get it? Love is a myth. So is summer.”
Little Big, John Crowley
I really loved this quote when I first read Little Big. It was a recommendation from my sister, who has better taste than me in all art. So when she recommends something, I will try to prioritize it. I like this excerpt, so let’s talk about it.
“Love is a myth” sounds like a quote that would be plastered in big block letters over a photo of a crying girl or a solitary wolf sitting in the forest, I’m sure I posted something similar on Facebook when I was 13 and my first serious girlfriend (for a young teen) dumped me on my mom’s birthday. Still bitter, thanks SL. But as the line continues, you realize it isn’t making some ontological claim about “Love”, but more so the ephemerality of emotion, the impermanence, the inability to conceive of alternatives. Grandfather Trout isn’t saying summer doesn’t exist nor is he saying love doesn’t exist. Just that when they’re not present, when you have the opposite, the lack of, it might as well be. And I mean, that makes sense to me. It’s summer currently and I can’t really feel winter nor can I imagine feeling it. The sun outside is too present. Inversely, in the winter when all my bones are mushed together with hands shoved deep in my pockets and chin pointed into my chest, I can’t recall the feelings of sweat and sunburn. In the midst of winter, summer might as well not exist- it doesn’t for any practical, phenomenological purposes. Reports of this season where the grass is green and the trees are full and the sun leans on you with all its weight are completely unbelievable in winter, the only reason we can conceive of it is because we’ve felt it before. Imagine being born and living in only one season, the rest would feel like fantasy.
All the talk of seasons also makes me think of this Japanese term, mono no aware. It’s one of those things I know about, but don’t really know about. So we’ll steal from Wikipedia and I’ll interpret it the way I want because it’s my blog. Wikipedia says-
“Mono no aware (an empathy towards things, a sensitivity to ephemera) is a Japanese idiom for the awareness of impermanence, or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.”
Don’t you love when other languages have such specific terms for the little feelings we people have? It’s a really acute thing, I don’t feel it often, but I certainly have felt it before, that tinge of heartbreak when it gets a little too warm to wear a jacket outside. The world has a clock we’re all beholden to, one that colors everything. Summer leaves as quickly as it came, marking its departure with an exodus of fireflies. And Fall arrives just the same, the air getting dryer and the leaves shaking themselves from their perches.
Many of the great memories of my life have been marked by this sensitivity to impermanence. I remember one time at the end of high school, my whole friend group was hanging out. At least fifteen of us, all huddled around my friend’s back porch, smoking and drinking like we had done every weekend for the past couple years. One friend of mine said “This could be the last time all of us are together again”. Who cares man, you’re drunk, drink more, smoke a cigarette, don’t be a downer. But he was right, I think. Sure, there have been times since where we’ve had a good 90% attendance, but I don’t think all of us have been together since. One member of the group went to college in Vermont, four of us went further south for college, a bunch stayed in our hometown. When it became time for New Year’s celebrations, at least one person would have other plans. We never all got together again. I suppose if we were to, the next one would be a funeral, which is more of a downer. But if you really pay attention, at the moments when you’re having the most fun, when you’re at your most comfortable, you can find this wistfulness. The acknowledgment that everything you’re feeling right now won’t be here at some point, that it’s the end of summer and you can see the leaves turning shades of orange and red on the trees.
I suppose it’s fall for me now, maybe winter (this is a tough metaphor). It was summer for me for the longest time. But thinking back, the summer came out of nowhere. Sometime in my senior year of college, it was a terrible winter. Isolated me, burning himself in the wood stove, a bitter atheist on matters regarding summer. But out of nowhere, my snow thawed and flowers bloomed. The snow turned to rain which turned into fields of greens and yellows and blues. And I suddenly couldn’t remember the winter anymore, my life was spring, new beginnings, blossoming love and friendships and experiences. The spring hardened and the sun came closer, and then it was summer. It was summer for a while for me. So long that I had completely erased the burns of the wood stove, forgotten the feeling of chilled air hitting my lungs, the muted sound of snow falling. In winter, summer is a myth.
There’s an impossibility that comes with emotions, I think, for me at least. When I’m happy, I can’t imagine alternatives. I don’t know if a cup could conceive of itself as empty when it’s full, maybe it can, but I surely cannot. There’s also the ephemerality of emotions. They come strong, fade, surge, fade again, go away, maybe come back, maybe don’t. Happiness, sadness, anger, love, loneliness, they ebb and flow and yield to each other, like seasons. I suppose I should learn to cultivate an appreciation for moments while I’m in them, to feel the summer heat and not take it for granted, to try to remember cold winter nights when I’m sweating. Not only that, to take note of when the petals fall or when the ground thaws, to be ready for the seasonal changes.
All of this is to say, right now, summer feels like its somewhere between myth and fairy tale, something told to me for hopeful purposes. It’s not freezing outside yet, but I’m swapping out the light button downs on my hangers for jackets and coats. But y’know, it was winter for me once before. And summer came, as impossible as that is to believe. It’ll come again, even if that doesn’t seem to be the case.
jeez, louise 