Saturday 6 April 2013

smarch und mapril

I like how the trappings of Easter, unlike with other holidays, are compelled to be taken down and stowed away for next year—or replaced by the commercial creep and anticipation of the next batch of observances around the corner, right away. I guess that’s partially owing to the fact that the customs associated with Easter, partially, are a mixed-metaphor, with all notions of promise, renewal and rebirth celebrated and borrowing from one another, and something to be savoured.

Although the coming season it heralds is having a little bit of difficulty with its launch. Nature is nonplussed with the delay, with migration and germination hitting obstacles, and I think people, considering what a tumultuous past month we’ve had—whereas March is generally sanguine: the cold-wave and drought-conditions maybe exacerbating the ongoing recession, the sequestration stand-off in the States, the banking crisis in Cyprus, adulterated meat on the store-shelves, sabre-rattling all around, massive hack-attacks, litigiousness, yet a few good things came about despite all the chaos. I think that’s why the Eierschau remains until Spring and Summer are fully established.

Most decorations are such eggs hanging from willow switches or displayed on a village well, but I also appreciated this last interpretation, which seems a custom in itself, exchanging the Christmas lights for plastic edges on these sculpted hedges. It feels like a weird, inverted interlude, barreling towards Winter rather than Summer. I hope keeping these charms on exhibit do us a better turn.