autumn

Tonight there is a harvest moon in the sky, a sharp-edged disc of light hung against the cold velvet of late September. Out there underneath it is a sleeping world. Ringing the low slung hills are wreaths of thin fog, the creeping kind that will disappear before the sun has fully ripened. I want to walk among it but am too tired, and too afraid of the stirring souls in between things.

I came home late and the moon's midnight glow sharpened the objects around me, sharper than daylight, much sharper than memory. The moon is a great leveler; everything is equal beneath it, where color and familiarity have been stripped and the world is frozen in silvered relief.

This autumn I'm thinking of the impermanence of things, of people and emotions and promises and dreams. This way of thinking can be dangerous; sometimes, it knocks me off balance. I grasp for things I can rely on; of course, these are always inanimate objects and words. The weathered hills around me, rubbed smooth by wind and sea air. The sea air itself. How seasons continue to grow and fade, each with hallmarks unique to themselves. Autumn, for instance: its hallmarks are often symbolic of death and yet so many beginnings sprout in this season. The blinding, suffocating wide open expanse of summer is tempered by a bright chill in the morning air, and heavy, extravagant moons. The smell of crisped leaves and the dust they leave behind as they twist and fall to the ground; the reaching silhouettes of slowly thinning trees; trailing pumpkin vines whose bright, wrinkled blossoms unfurl with quiet abandon before quickly gathering themselves up and in for their death. There is nothing quite like the smell of cold. It is sharp and clean and comforting, and doesn't languish in the lungs and veins like the melting warmth of summer air.

And there is the ocean. I'm drawn to its indifference, its dismissal of human suffering as it revels in the wake of the moon. On this coastline a roiling strip of foam lines the crumbling rock face to remind us that we do not know what struggle means; that we should, instead, fall into the lullaby of the ocean's thrum and roll and fill our hearts with the meaning of sound and smell alone. Feel the swell of sweet relief when we abandon the chaos of analyzing and worrying and remembering. Breathe and be content. That is what makes us human, after all.