autumnal thoughts
Oct. 28th, 2007 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonJust shy of Samhain (one of 'em, anyway), my thoughts are full of contemplations of endings, letting go of the old, letting pass what needs to pass, and preparing for a new year to come. The signs are all around -- geese flying south in raucous formation overhead, a few hardy songbirds sitting outside my window shivering, preparing for their own long journey to warmer climes, a chill in the air, woodsmoke smell on the wind, the first frost on the ground in the morning...not much, or often, yet, but coming, coming, the change from green, through red and brown, to white and silver and the cold sleep of the earth, as she gracefully enters her yearly slumber.
And looking at (and playing amongst) the leaves, now mostly finished with their yearly gaudy show of brilliant spectral wonder, I am reminded of why the leaves change their color -- the colors, the pigments we see in Fall are there all year long, are in fact the "natural" color of those leaves, but visually overwhelmed by the busy burgeoning green of chlorophyl-filled leafy food factories, performing their essential task of turning sunlight and carbon dioxide into food and oxygen. The true colors of the leaves don't get to shine forth until they die, until they end their lives of production and let go of their ceaseless tasks of creation.
It's easy to let the insistent necessities of life rule us -- the continual need to produce, to build, to work, to turn our precious life's blood and our irreplaceable moments of time into energy, food, wealth, livelihood, career, house, substance. So, if you wish, take this as a gentle reminder of the season, to claim some of those precious moments of your life and let go of the engine of needful production and creation, giving yourself and those around you the gift of making space and time to allow your own true colors their time to shine forth -- here, now, before you reach the end of your own life.
We can all choose, from time to time, to show our own gaudy, brilliant Fall colors, those shades and hues that lie hidden beneath the surface, concealed and camouflaged by the necessities of day to day, of chores and obligations and needful things. The making, the building, the work, it's all necessary to survival...but there are, too, such colors to be found, by letting all of those things go, just for a moment, to see what's underneath, waiting to emerge...
Glorious ever-changing colors of life to you all, and joyous love in the leaves, whatever color they may be...
And looking at (and playing amongst) the leaves, now mostly finished with their yearly gaudy show of brilliant spectral wonder, I am reminded of why the leaves change their color -- the colors, the pigments we see in Fall are there all year long, are in fact the "natural" color of those leaves, but visually overwhelmed by the busy burgeoning green of chlorophyl-filled leafy food factories, performing their essential task of turning sunlight and carbon dioxide into food and oxygen. The true colors of the leaves don't get to shine forth until they die, until they end their lives of production and let go of their ceaseless tasks of creation.
It's easy to let the insistent necessities of life rule us -- the continual need to produce, to build, to work, to turn our precious life's blood and our irreplaceable moments of time into energy, food, wealth, livelihood, career, house, substance. So, if you wish, take this as a gentle reminder of the season, to claim some of those precious moments of your life and let go of the engine of needful production and creation, giving yourself and those around you the gift of making space and time to allow your own true colors their time to shine forth -- here, now, before you reach the end of your own life.
We can all choose, from time to time, to show our own gaudy, brilliant Fall colors, those shades and hues that lie hidden beneath the surface, concealed and camouflaged by the necessities of day to day, of chores and obligations and needful things. The making, the building, the work, it's all necessary to survival...but there are, too, such colors to be found, by letting all of those things go, just for a moment, to see what's underneath, waiting to emerge...
Glorious ever-changing colors of life to you all, and joyous love in the leaves, whatever color they may be...
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-28 06:23 pm (UTC)Where I live, the green is with us pretty much all year, and yet I try to show my colours all the time. There is a swamp maple growing up here on the top of the sand hills of my part of Florida. It's about 100 feet from my house and it is still totally green. If it does change colour this year, it will be green again by late february. The other trees will be green all winter except for the one species that drops its leaves, a transplant from the tropics. I'm still looking north in the sky for the birds, but it takes a while for them to get here. In a place where autumn never really happens, the veil seems a bit thicker.