Autumn Leaves

Abbey of the Arts has a great blog and great commenters. Here is a comment, about autumn leaves, from Kigen:

The new vibrant hues are the “original nature” so to speak of the leaf. The green leaf in spring is actually a masking of that original color by the influx of chlorophyll. When the chlorophyll is no longer secreted in autumn we see the true colors of the leaf.

That just rocks my socks, dear reader. Almost makes me jealous that many people are in the throes of autumn. Almost, but not really. I'll sit where I am, thanks very much, where the light is stretching out, trying to finger midnight.

This past winter though was the easiest one I have had for years. Every year that passes and my health improves, it is becoming easier to bear. Certainly it went faster than other years. My art therapist loves winter, lives on Mount Dandenong which is always 5 degrees colder than where I am, and often rainy and dark. She likes the inwardness, appreciates the closeness, the upswing in creativity that comes for her at that time of year. For me, having such disordered circadian rhythms, I need the overabundance of summer light to truly feel alive and most energetic. Perhaps as I regain more energy I shall revere it less. But summer will always spell freedom to me personally. And yet, listening to Maggie's take on the darkest of months, I think I am beginning to enter into a bit more of an appreciation for the mystery of death, the undergroundedness of it, you know? In a world where the true colour of leaves are those that swell our hearts in autumn, everything shifts.

So my appreciation for winter has renewed somewhat, our standoff diminished a point or two. I think listening to Maggie whilst in the midst of the environment of the Dandenong Ranges once a fortnight has done something to alter that. The mystery is on display there in a way it cannot be in the suburbs. I feel, in my bones, one day I shall live there. I was up that way last night, actually, at Ruby's Lounge in Belgrave, seeing some live music. It was great; there is something about listening to music fresh out of the oven that does something calming to my soul. Plants my feet further into the earth somehow.

So I sit here paying homage to autumn and winter when its almost summer. What is wrong with me? I guess I just have a renewed appreciation for everything belonging, you know? All the seasons speak to us in different ways. Now, autumn will speak to me even louder than it already does. Our true natures on display most when living next door to the season of death, the melancholy and fear that can overwhelm if we miss the redemptive beauty existing even in death. My freedom in summer can be diminished if I contemplate the inevitable onrush of winter, the gradual slide down into diminished hours. But I want to embrace it all, because it all matters. It all matters in a world where everything, love and life and melancholia and death, have been enfolded in the arms of grace. Surely in such a space we can all learn to straddle the redemption of the dark.

Pic: from the garden and camera of Kentster