Tonight I can smell the season the way it's usually only possible to at the very first moments of its return, before you're used to it, when you've forgotten its smell, then there it is back in the air and the flow of things shifting and resettling again.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the refreshing and nostalgic experience of recognizing the return of a season.
Ali Smith's quote beautifully captures the essence of experiencing a season's return with fresh senses, evoking nostalgia as it describes the unique moment when one first notices the distinctive smells of a season after a long absence. It signifies not just the physical changes in nature but also the emotional and internal shifts that accompany such seasonal transitions, highlighting the interconnectedness of our environment and our feelings.
In practice
In a poetry reading, to illustrate the beauty of seasonal change.
And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to.
It's about the connecting force from form to form. It's the toe bone connecting to the shoulder bone. It's the bacterial kick of life force, something growing out of nothing, forming itself out of something else. Form never stops. And form is always environmental.
Google is so strange. It promises everything, but everything isn’t there. You type in the words for what you need, and what you need becomes superfluous in an instant, shadowed instantaneously by the things you really need, and none of them answerable by Google.
Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.
The time has come to link ecology to economic and human development. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. What is happening to the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil will affect us all.
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us.
Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.
Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.
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