Fall

Fall is making its first appearance here, and that is good.

I wanted to write about things like people complaining about getting the free U2 album or how we decided when/if to view violent images given the glut of violent videos in the news, but it's grey outside and I'm having trouble making something sound like a creature with opposable thumbs wrote it.

It's interesting how we react to the first signs of nature's dying. Pumpkin spice lattes! Apple things! FESTIVALS ALL OF THE FESTIVALS. We make the time about flourishing, about reaping and harvesting. That's for the best, I think, since as things with big brains we're acutely aware of how we'll have to face long Winter's death before Spring's eventual revival. We need celebration, some blissful ignorance before we truly admit where we're at in the cycle.

My old choir professor used to read us The Fall of Freddie the Leaf each year. It's a lovely book about endings, about how natural they are. We are fortunate, many of us, to see endings and beginnings many times, both around us and within us. Eventually our end will truly begin, too. We'll enter one last Fall, tired and cliché as that sounds. Still, there's always something new, even in endings.

So before I get too frustrated that I can't outwit my own lack of creativity today, I can admire my trying as part of the process. It's a leaf falling, a beautiful one lost to marching Winter and one fondly imitated in the coming Spring. I should enjoy it while it's here.