There is a great deal of fodder for opinion columns at present. Doctor-assisted suicide, the death penalty and gay marriage are all hot topics in New Hampshire. But as I sat down to write this, I found that I had a great craving to write something light, pleasant and not too hard to think about: the op-ed equivalent of the classic Billy Joel tune, "Uptown Girl." Thus, the topic for my editorial is "Why I like spring." I'm tired of writing about contentious issues, like first amendment rights or sorority rush, and this is my guilty pleasure column -- my "Snakes on a Plane", if you will -- indulging in the cheap pleasures of college life.
My freshman year, Spring term was my favorite, and I believe that the Green Key weekend motto, "For No Reason," speaks to why I feel that way.
As the snow melts, nature blooms, birds twitter in the trees and animals engage in a Darwinian war to impregnate one another, Dartmouth mirrors these natural patterns, except with the addition of birth control. Everyone stops trudging wearily from class to class, staring at his or her shoes. We become aware of our surroundings. We all look around, and realize, "Hey, we live in a beautiful place -- relatively close to nature, in a small, comfortable community." And then everyone goes back to the basement again, wallowing in cheap booze and veiled advances for no-strings-attached sex.
But this time we're not doing these things because of the crushing depression and disillusionment of winter. It is instead "for no reason," a bittersweet celebration of life's transience and baser charms.
Allen Ginsberg, in a tribute to William S. Burroughs' novel "Naked Lunch," wrote, "A naked lunch is natural to us, / we eat reality sandwiches. / But allegories are so much lettuce. / Don't hide the madness!" Spring in Hanover is a naked lunch -- albeit one served at this cushy playground for overgrown child-people and not exactly in the real world. With no bonfire and no snow sculpture to serve as any sort of symbolic excuse for what everyone wants to do and does anyway, Green Key weekend condenses the spirit of spring in Hanover into a few days. Stripped of the traditions of Winter Carnival and Homecoming, Green Key is the least pretentious of the big weekends: booze, a block party and fair weather. That's about it.
As this may sound like a critique of Spring term at Dartmouth, you may be wondering why I said it was my favorite term -- as indeed it is. The answer is simple. Alhough spring is not free of malaise, it is a variety of malaise that is much easier to like than that of winter. It is refreshing to stand in the midst of it and observe the wild, sordid things that are happening.
You must dig this malaise. This is imperative. Any failure to dig the malaise disqualifies you from participation in the human race. You must retreat to a monastery and live out your days darning socks and copying scrolls, or whatever it is monks do. Yet, at the same time, becoming an unconscious part of the malaise disqualifies you as well. You spiral into decadence and atrophy the very faculties that you must retain in order to dig anything. Your trajectory goes from bottle to gutter to grave.
It is a difficult line to walk. I wonder if I will manage the crossing, as I'm sure we all do. It is, after all, our peace of mind and sanity that is at stake. But that's the fun of it. And if you fall off, you can (usually) get back on.
That's my take on spring. Thanks for tolerating the self-references that plagued this column from the beginning. The ego's appetite for itself is ravenous. But in these turbulent times of ours, can't we afford to coddle ourselves in great swathes of collegiate ego for a little longer? The real world looms and war drums thunder, but I am willing to consign myself to the comfort of the Dartmouth bubble and the rotation of its insular seasons for a few more years.
To quote the poet Auden, "All the conventions conspire / To make this fort assume / The furniture of home; / Lest we should see where we are, / Lost in a haunted wood..."
Hanover in spring! Assume the furniture of home!
