Letters from the editors, LIT 42
Dear Reader,
We bring you LIT 42 and today it is the spring Equinox. It is equal portions light and dark as we hinge between season’s, a magic trick of perfect balance and of liminality, a pause on tippy toes before we leap into spring. With this issue we turn the dirt to release the smell of fresh earth from winter’s stasis to the sun.
Keep digging and you’re bound to run into some buried things: some bones; a broken headlight; a love letter. Shadows crease and collapse, keep digging: a medical journal from the 1950s, its pages pulped with mycelium it blooms; a pocket of ash, whose, not sure; a broken bottle, could be bourbon; a mitten with the faint smell of gas; a bird’s feather, a tooth; a crepe paper banner that crinkles a hoarse whisper of welcome home …
March 20th marks the start of spring with the vernal equinox—a day when light and dark exist in equal measures. The word “vernal” comes from the Latin “vernus” and may be derived from the Proto-Indo-European root word, “*h₁ews-,” meaning “to burn.” The spring marks a number of fertility rituals across the world, symbolic of the seeds one plants in the earth to grow into summer fruits. It’s funny to think about all the ways we honor the way in which the cosmic wheel turns; Persephone returns from the Underworld and Jesus pulls the rock from his tomb, both stories of resurrection and the dawn of a new day. Even the Ides of March warns of ill omens and the death of Emperors, the marking of our final darkest days.
In some ways, we do burn from the renewal, clearing out the old and revealing the new. Passions arise, new relationships form, and the buds of crocuses open their flowers to reveal bright red stigma. It’s a reminder to sing of the dark days, because sometimes all we can do is linger in the dark, but to hold on to hope and sow the seeds of change in our fertile soils. It’s rosemary, for remembrance and to keep at our garden gates, and though our violets may wither unexpectedly, we can always plant lavender, for luck and love. Like the forsythia, let hope bloom, let it take root, and through every winter, we will see its vibrant buds once more.
We give you LIT 42: keep digging.
The Editors
