Let There Be Light - Please!

The lessons are coming thick and fast these days, but then so are the soft landings. Indeed, they seem to be everywhere I look now. God's reminder that he is my soft landing. Friends, certain colours, a tree, the golden light at 8pm as the sun is winding down its act. The rain softly falling this morning and the air cooler, after several days dry and hot weather - my favourite sort.

I love rainy overcast days in the middle of summer. The smell the earth yields up. We must come from dust - that smell is something kinda orgiastic to me. Earth. Reminds me of myself. I could eat it ... but it tastes so bad :)

I love rainy days in the middle of summer ... except it's not the middle of summer. It's screaming towards the end. The local football team has started up its training in the oval a street over from me. Their yells for the ball reach me in my yard. My own football team has started up their preseason, a scrappy win in a game not even a fan could love. There is no sign of any yellow or orange leaves - we still have Indian summer to go yet - but Autumn is coming. It's on the wind. I feel whispers of it, memories from years past, in the coolness of the day. My Northern American and European friends begin hopefully whispering desires for Spring.

I love Autumn. Melbourne in Autumn is a sensory delight, especially for an arboreal delighter. Colour explosions. Warmth and coolness. A return to jeans, boots. Autumn in and of itself is a delicious season.

But Autumn means Winter is next. And I dread it. I can't help it. I know that the march towards June equals disrupted days. As the light shortens, my nights lengthen. Every year the same. My summer habit of waking at 8am or 8.30am becomes something I have to strive for, accomplishable only by light therapy for an hour every day. Oh, for a correctly functioning body clock :)

But dreading the onset of Winter in February is sad even by my SAD standards. If that is the measuring stick, then why not dread bad times snap bang in the middle of euphoria? Where does it end? And what a waste that is, dreading the inevitable. I'm sitting out too high on the minutes of the day. Immersed in them, forgetful of myself, I don't think about what is coming tomorrow. Today has enough joys of its own. Worrying about tomorrow's sufferings, I miss today's joys.