Thus have I heard...

Autumn:

"In a paradox, opposites do note negate each - they cohere in mysterous unity at the heart of reality. Deeper still, they need each other for health, as my body needs to breathe in as breathe out. But in a culture that prefers the ease of either-or thinking to the complexities of paradox, we have a hard time holding opposites together. We want light without darkness, the glories of spring and summer without the demands of autumn and winter - and the Faustian bargains we make fail to sustain our lives."

Winter:

"Despite all appearances, of course, nature is not dead in winter - it has gone underground to renew itself and prepare for spring. Winter is a time when we are admonisted, and even inclined, to do the same for ourselves.

But for me, winter has an even greater gift to give. It comes when the sky is clear, the sun is brilliant, the trees are bare, and first snow yet to come. It is the gift of utter clarity. In winter, one can walk into woods that had been opaque with summer growth only a few months earlier and see the trees clearly, singly and together, and see the ground they are rooted in."

Spring:

"Though spring begins slowly and tentatively, it grows with a tenacity that never fails to touch me. The smallest and most tender shoots insist on having their way, coming up through ground that looked, only a few weeks earlier, as if it would never grow anything again...

In my own life, as my winters segue into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility: for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again."

Summer:

"Here is the summertime truth: abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole and, in return, is sustained by the whole. Community doesn't just create abundance - community is abundance. If we could learn that equation from the world of nature, the human world might be transformed."

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"Well, I don't know if it was the wine or my own silliness or the warm air or the lemon tree, or whatever...But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.

"And then someone passed me a bit of some sweet stuff and I suddently realized I had been to China. So to speak. And I'd forgotten it. It was the taste of the sweet stuff that brought it back - I think it was marzipan. Sweet almond paste," she explained to Lyra, who was looking confused.

Lyra said, "Ah! Marchpane!" and settled back comfortably to hear what happened next.

"Anyway," Mary went on. "I remembered the taste, and all at once I was back tasting it for the first time as a young girl. I was twelve years old. I was at a party at the house of one of my friends, a birthday party, and there was a disco - that's where they play music on a kind of recording machine and people dance," she explained, seeing Lyra's puzzlement. "Usually girls dance together because the boys are too shy to ask them. But this boy - I didn't know him - he asked me to dance, and so we had the first dance and then the next, and by that time we were talking...And you know what it is like when you like someone, you know it at once; well, I liked him such a lot. And we kept on talking and then there was birthday cake. And he took a bit of marzipan and he just gently put it in my mouth - I remember trying to smile, and blushing, and feeling so foolish - and I fell in love with him just for that, for the gentle way he touched my lips with the marzipan."

As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't know was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, she felt other doors opening deep in the darkness, and lights coming on. She sat trembling as Mary went on:

"And I think it was that party, or it might been at another one, that we kissed each other for the first time. It was in a garden, and there was the sound of music from inside, and the quiet and the cool among the trees, and I was aching - all my body was aching for him, and I could tell he felt the same - and we were both almost too shy to move. Almost. But one of us did and then without any interval between - it was like a quantum leap, suddenly - we were kissing each other, and oh, it was more than China, it was paradise."

It was the strangest thing: Lyra knew exactly what she meant, and half an hour earlier she would have had no idea at all. And inside her, that rich house with all its doors open and all its rooms lit stood waiting, quiet, expectant.

"And at half past nine in the evening at that restaurant table in Portugal," Mary continued, "someone gave me a piece of marzipan and it all came back. And I though: am I going to spend the rest of my life without ever feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mystery and joy. I though, Will anyone be better off if I go straight back to the hotel and say my prayers and confess to the priest and promise never to fall into temptation again? Will anyone be better for making me miserable?

"And the answer came back - no. No one will. There's no one to fret, no one to condemn, no one to bless me for being a good girl, no one to punish me for being wicked. Heaven was empty. I didn't know whether God had died, or whether there never had been a God at all. Either way I felt free and lonely and I didn't know whether I was happy or unhappy, but something very strange had happened. And all that huge change came about as I had the marzipan in my mouth, before I'd even swallowed it. A taste - a memory - a landslide..."

-The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

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