“…and the light is both measure and number of the seasons, days, and all our time.”
Dionysios Areopagita (Bishop of Athens, c. 1st century AD)
Where on earth has the light gone? Many people suffer from the blues every winter. Yet people have always lived with changing seasons and the earth’s orbit around the sun. When winter takes hold, landscapes distant from both tropics are shrouded in a hazy greyness and areas within the polar circles descend into months of darkness. Warmth, colour and levity vanish from everyday life. Some people enjoy the minimalism of the icy, monochrome days; however the majority probably still long for exuberant, vibrant colours flooded by sunshine. Watching light dwindle and darkness approach triggers a deeper melancholy than the joyful anticipation of its return. But can someone who has never faced winter’s intense darkness truly delight in the lush greenery of early summer? Can someone who has never experienced midsummer’s sultry languor really enjoy wet and wuthering autumn winds and bitterly cold winter snows? Everyone may well have a favourite season, but without diametrically contrasting conditions, we would not be able to derive such pleasure from them. So, living with the seasons, knowing all the colours of light, all the types of rain and snow, all the nuances of fog and movements of clouds is wonderful. With each season our breadth of vision, our perception and our attitude to life grows and renews. And the consistent, unfailing changes increase our will to survive through bad times, as Albert Camus remarked: ”In the midst of the deepest winter, I found, within me, an invincible summer.“ So, chin up, embrace the misty greyness, the chilly drizzle of spring, the dank melancholia. I promise that sooner or later the sunshine will return with gently warming and glimmering rays.
Read the new issue of ALUCOBOND’s digital magazine Forms & Elements here.