"O Wild West Wind, thou breathe of Autumn's being...."
- Shelley
I have been seized with that restlessness, seasonal melancholy that brings in Autumn.
The leaves have not yet turned, but there is the shortening of days, the lengthening of shadows, the quick chill in the morning that never dispels itself....
It is Autumn.
And there is the wind, blowing from the west, earlier than the wind of Shelley, but the same. It always arrives here earlier, truly summer only lasts until the end of July, then the light changes, the shortening of days becomes more pronounced, there is that rush to finish those countless chores of summer....
TO explore, adventure, travel, live, each day growing shorter, quicker, more and more noticable.
Until it's September and Autumn is here, perhaps not on the calendar, but it's here. Dark still at 6:00 AM, chill outside, leaves and branches from the trees, still green, begin gathering on the lawns. There is the full harvest moon hanging bloated in the sky, low to the horizon, the next time it appears there will have been frost....
It is Autumn.
Strange, it fills me always with sadness, yet is my favorite season. It conjures, evokes within me memories of returning to University, of fresh acquaintance and old souls gathering in the halls, of finding new classrooms.
Of warm coffee in the morning, pretty girls whom you will know by the end of semester, the romance of libraries and of cozy winebars, live theatre, haunting music played late on the radio. It heralds winter, and you can see through the still green lawns to the frozen ground, to trees with barren fingers reaching up to the sky, to cold graves shoveled through the snow.
It is the colour of burnt sienna and raw umber and smells like freshly ground coffee, old leather and red wine, it's the bracing cold of early morning before the sun has arisen, early snowflakes melting upon your cheek, it's the smell of rare perfumes and burning leaves, it's the taste of pumpkin pies and crabapples, it's the hope, always, that this year it will be different, this year will be the one....
There is the sadness for the memories of loves that have failed, romances fallen by the wayside, people stolen away by death or circumstance, it begins the season of gathering and preparing for winter, the gestation of ideas and ambitions until more sunny and fortuitous times are upon us....
It is Autumn, and when you go outside the wind, the sun, remind you of how soon it will be here, how soon it will be winter, and somewhere in my soul there's an archtype, an understanding that with each season my own days are numbered....
It has been postulated that time is an illusion, that everything that has happened in the universe has happened all at once, for an instant and an eternity, and what we imagine to be time is a distortion of our senses that brings to us only what we can understand, a necessary evolution (if that can be applied here), and so we are forever in the womb, in the embrace of our lovers, in the cold earth beneath us...