“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”
― Yoko Ono
We live surrounded by bliss and beauty, passion and poetics, and yet it can be so simple to overlook, so difficult to authentically detach, so challenging to stop and breath in the wonders that life shares with us daily. I often think about the movie, American Beauty, in which the main character, Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey, whimsically reflects on life, noting, “I need to remember...Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.”
I chose to open this piece with the verse from Yoko Ono because she captures for us the beauty inherent not only in the romance of the four seasons but the emotions each season conjures for us. Providing each of us with memories and moments frozen in time yet sharing across all of us a universal beauty the transcends specificity, the four seasons speak a language that needs no words to be understood; they talk to our hearts and live in our souls. And, much like the passion personified in each season, Julianna Glass creates a beauty and elegance purposefully unique to one’s innocence and exuberance, one’s reverence and perseverance.
Spring
As the springtime rain delicately breathes new life into us all, fields of blossoming buds begin to talk to the world. Vibrant pastels envelop our hearts and dance within our glasses; notes of lavender and lilac swirl about, pirouetting their perfection as the bottles of Rosé are poured. These glasses tell a story of hope--one as old as the world itself, and yet as we sip the sweetness of spring from them, we lean in, yet again, optimistically waiting to be regaled by the narratives of the past and the fables of the future.
Summer
The salt-stained ocean air sprays love upon us as the sun’s sensual touch devours our senses, comforting us in the familiar way that only the passion of a sublime summer evening can. Brilliant colors illuminate the sky and our glasses with bursts of the extraordinary. Condensation from the chilly cocktail saunters its way carefully down the pristine etching and subtly nestles over the crystals--a twinkle as bright as any star calls out for a wish and reminds us that dreams do come true.
Autumn
Brilliant hues of the most exquisite varieties dance across the slow-fading afternoon sky and softly swaddle the ever-chilling ground. The subtle crunch of the impending winter sings to us with each delicate step. And our wine pours forth with ruby Pinots and violet Merlots, golden Chardonnay and burnt-red Gamay. Each stunning glass another complex layer of the delicate cornucopia that is the beauty in life, shinning one last time before the frost takes its rest upon us all.
Winter
A sensual sonata falls gently outside wrapping us all softly in a beautiful blanket as the crackling from the fireplace warms our ears and out skin. Passionately clutching our glasses, bountifully colored by the deep purple of a succulent Syrah, we stare deeply into the seeming endlessness of the season, more perturbed with each passing day, yearning for something more only to remember that within each moment lies its own beauty, its own magic.
After all, “it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world” (Lester Burnham, American Beauty)
By Christopher Bronke
