Transience

Spring has always been my favourite season. This is an unfortunate thing for a girl living in Minnesota where spring lasts maybe two and a half days before either a miserable return to a seemingly unending winter or a leap to oppressively unbearable heat. (Sorry, Minnesotans - much of the year your weather is not really my thing.) Growing up in Nebraska, I thought spring was a glorious time of wonderful, fresh smells of new grass and lilacs, coupled with a giddy excitement about school coming to an end in May. (Again, Minnesotans, sorry - keeping kids (and teachers) in school until mid-June is rough.)

In London, I've enjoyed something of a return to my Nebraskan roots and love for spring. Flowers were blooming in early March and I got to enjoy being outdoors much sooner than Minnesota ever allows. Even though we had a relapse to a very grey and rainy April and dreary early May, the weather this week has erased any misery that caused. Sitting in the park eating lunch or reading a play for my dissertation, I recognize my good fortune once again to be in this lovely place.

These days are not without their emotional pitfalls, however. Even though I'll be in London for another few weeks, this most surreal year of my life is nearing its close. Messages from home are coming more frequently and thoughts (of work, classes to prepare, theatre to direct, students to teach, an apartment to find, a cat to reclaim, friends to see, bills to pay, and the like) break into my work more often and insistently than they have done since October. Dissertation pressure is beginning to mount, and I foresee a smothering level of stress in my near future.

Mostly, though, I'm getting a little sad about the lovely people I've met here who will soon no longer be a part of my daily - or even weekly - life. When I thought about spending a year in London, I imagined all the wonderful things I would get to see and do, but I could not have imagined the people who would do so much to shape my time here. Last night a group of my friends got together for the last time before we begin to go our separate ways. Typically, the evening was characterized by laughter rather than sadness, and the talks of philosophy, art, literature, and life didn't suffer because we knew it was the final time. If anything, they became more important.

Sigmund Freud's essay 'On Transience' deals with exactly this idea. He discusses that time limits placed on enjoyment of something should increase its value rather than diminishing it. Because an experience is temporary, we should relish it all the more; many people let the mourning for the impending loss lessen their joy in the present. If you've never read this essay, please do. It's not long, and Freud says all this more eloquently than I can.

Spring's ephemeral nature is partially the cause of my love for it; the first beautiful days after a grey and chilly winter call to me with their blue skies and sunshine, creating an intense longing to make the most of those precious gifts. And part of what I find so precious is knowing that my heady euphoria is entirely temporary as spring flowers and delicate breezes inevitably make way for their heartier summer counterparts.

Tavistock Square

This is how I feel about my stay in London. It was always fated to be of short duration, so appreciating its wonders is that much more important. The friendships I enjoy won't be ending because of physical distance, though they will be materially changed. That does not make them less valuable. I find myself occasionally mourning these changes that will soon come, but the incredible quality of these people and our time together won't allow me to mourn as it happens. In this case, as in the spring, beauty triumphs over transience.

Gordon Square

As I write this, I'm looking out my window over the house where Virginia Woolf lived; I see a perfectly blue sky only marred by a single airplane trail (insert Mrs Dalloway reference here). I'm in the middle of research into representations of females in contemporary mainstream American drama, and I'm about to do some more reading in the park. My work in 21st-century American drama means that I'm rereading Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play A Doll's House today (obviously), and the sunshine is calling me to come out and enjoy it. My hands and ego are a little bruised from falling up some stairs last night (the name Ann means graceful, also obviously), but nothing will diminish my enjoyment of these last weeks in London and this surreal and ephemerally beautiful year.