Spring, meteorologists will be aware, is something of a transitory season. A tiny township lodged between two intensely charismatic cities. Folks wander from winter to summer and scarcely notice the miles in-between.
For sure, plenty poets, artists, assorted bohemian layabouts have waxed on and off about rebirth and about dawn and about sheep getting filthy and so on and so fourth, but for the most part, Spring tends to stand at the back of the room, is what.
It don't make no fuss, hardly says a word, except for maybe the odd delightful quip to ladies walking past in pursuit of a decent drink, for fucks sakes, or maybe a line of speed plundered from out the pulsing chasms of a needle-boned debutante's pocket. Spring doesn't need to start hollering out loud about socialism or why the new pope is a fascist fuck. It leaves all that to summer.
Summer, you'll be aware, is a loud-mouthed bastard, bounding drunkenly onto table tops, spilling drinks left and right in a bid to get noticed.
Spring just wanders in when it's supposed to, takes a look around, maybe sits with a book, maybe My Last Breath by Luis Bunuel, and then it leaves, having stirred some sort of anticipation by doing nothing more than arriving on time.
Spring and Autumn are the quiet types. Probably they spend their days writing songs about Marx and loneliness, looking up now and again for to grab a glimmer of inspiration from a girl with a cool beret, or from a muse bathed in savage purple, or from a fella with a beard that challenges every belief held by western civilisation.
Spring and Autumn pen the ballads that Summer and Winter will later defile over a karaoke backing track.
(Mind you, here in The Northern Ireland, Summer and Winter tend to get all Godard on occasion, tend to trade places quite a bit, fuck with the continuity and the like.)
Who knows why, when it all boils down and so on, but for some inexplicable reason, this Spring, being the Spring of 2005, it took a look about the place, took stock of all those calendar pages torn and discarded throughout January and February, noted the fall of every sheet, every biro-amendment about "Some Birthday Or Other" or "Check - Should Be Bleeding By Now", it shed a tear or five for the pitiful mess those days ended up in, and decided something along the lines of no, I will not allow my time on this earth to become so much redundant paper.
Sweet fuck, thought Spring, I will make use of my time here.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Is this your audition tape for Innerspace II?
2 - Eric Berlin
Great stuff, Duke.
So what's next now that you've sprung free well into summer?
3 - Mat Brewster
Up here in the furthest reaches of The Duke's Arse, though, that winter gets painted all shades of metaphorical, and metaphorically, it was the harshest winter a motherfucker ever endured.
Beautiful, beautiful stuff, Duke.
4 - swingingpuss
The post was as pleasurable as a quick illict scatch on the arse ;-)
5 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Thank folks.
Temple - You rumbled me! I'm hoping to play the part of Dennis Quaid acting as The Duke.
Eric B - i have no idea where summer is goin to be takin a fella. someplace less internal, i'm hopin. who knows?
Mat - Thank you, man.
And Swingingpuss - That was EXACTLY my aim, in those very words ;)
6 - Eric Berlin
Man, I'd love to see an Inner Space sequel with The Duke in the lead role.
7 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
haha Eric, i'm hoping you'll use your power for to get me into a room with dennis quaid. i can persuade him.
8 - Greg Smyth
It says "Look here, a ring. Where's yours? Oh, sorry, forgot. If You See Her, Say Hello�"
Perfect, man. Perfect.
9 - Bennett
Kinda held off reading this, just knowing that it was there for me, when the time was right, when I had the time. So now its 95 fucking degrees outside, and I go out there to cool down.
There's a puddle of sweat on the floor under my chair, cause reading The Duke while eating hot shrimp soup in 110 degrees of humidity (the darkened room doesn't make it cooler you know) tends to make rivers and oceans run from all parts of my body.
But your words make me remember the cool breezes of Spring, annihilated by this brute of a Summer Sun that's baking my itchy feet in some kind of Inquisitorial torture.
But the memories you have me recall, memories of a time before the ground baked so hot that it cracked, those memories, they make me cooler for a while.
Thanks Duke.
10 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Greg and Bennett, thank you!
Greg - sometimes Bob says all there is to say about any given situation, alas...
Bennett, i'm glad you enjoyed it, man. i always feel guilty after flinging stuff this self-indulgent online, but if it keeps those puddles runnin (hah) then what harm can there be? scacely ANY, i'd wager