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Sep. 18th, 2012 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cinema_babeFor me, Fall begins the Tuesday after Labor Day and is marked by the beginning of the school year. It's more than two weeks until the beginning of Autumn, my favorite season.
One of the best vacations was about 17 years ago. It was October, I had just gone through a painful breakup and after 2 weeks of doing “The Zombie Shuffle”, decided to take a week off from work to stay in my pajamas and built a pillow fort to hide in. The first day I ate a box of something too sweet and shameful to even talk about.
The next day I decided I needed a change of scenery before the sugar fairy took me away.
I packed a few days’ worth of clothes, got in my car and just headed North. Through The Palisades, north through The Adirondacks (or it may have been the Catskills, I need to look that up). I passed through a spot called Cherry Plains and that name seemed funny because I was surrounded by rocky mountains, not a plain in site. I stayed on Rt 22 for a while longer and kept driving until I crossed over into Vermont somewhere in the Green Mountains.
Dear reader, I drove for 12 hours and ended up somewhere around Waterbury Vermont.
I could have made this drive in 6ish hours but I took all back roads and smaller highways: it was about making the journey not getting to the destination because once I got wherever it was I would end up, I didn’t know what I intended to do.
It was Autumn, so The Green Mountains were the Russet, Gold, Green Mountains. It was as if some messy goddess of nature had stuck her hands in pots of thick oil paints and slathered daubs of saturated colors all over the mountains. Pictures could never capture what it was like when I finally stopped: the clean air, the apple crisp wind, and the colors of a New England Autumn everywhere.
There was something very restorative for me. I had a hole the size of a man’s hand in my chest that my heart kept falling out of. And my books couldn’t fill it, and my writing couldn’t fill it, not movies, not booze, not tears. But bathing myself in the Autumn light and color purged me and cleansed me and made me feel whole.
I stayed for a few days poking around apple and pear orchards and that is when I realized that Autumn is a woman. Not a une jeune fille or sultry bombshell, but a woman. Mature and wise, dressed in rich winey reds and forest greens; crimson and amber; velvet and satin with gold jewelry on her wrists and ears. With wee touches of soft grey here and there. As I walked through an orchard I saw her leaning against a tree. She was holding a basket filled with produce and offered be a pear. I took it and when I bit in it was sweet and full of juice that tasted like optimism dipped in tears.
I knew then, the mountains could do nothing more for me.
So I turned my car south, homeward and when I got there it felt like my home again and not just a place to hide and lick my wounds.
Autumn Day
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.
Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.
Rainer Maria Rilke
One of the best vacations was about 17 years ago. It was October, I had just gone through a painful breakup and after 2 weeks of doing “The Zombie Shuffle”, decided to take a week off from work to stay in my pajamas and built a pillow fort to hide in. The first day I ate a box of something too sweet and shameful to even talk about.
The next day I decided I needed a change of scenery before the sugar fairy took me away.
I packed a few days’ worth of clothes, got in my car and just headed North. Through The Palisades, north through The Adirondacks (or it may have been the Catskills, I need to look that up). I passed through a spot called Cherry Plains and that name seemed funny because I was surrounded by rocky mountains, not a plain in site. I stayed on Rt 22 for a while longer and kept driving until I crossed over into Vermont somewhere in the Green Mountains.
Dear reader, I drove for 12 hours and ended up somewhere around Waterbury Vermont.
I could have made this drive in 6ish hours but I took all back roads and smaller highways: it was about making the journey not getting to the destination because once I got wherever it was I would end up, I didn’t know what I intended to do.
It was Autumn, so The Green Mountains were the Russet, Gold, Green Mountains. It was as if some messy goddess of nature had stuck her hands in pots of thick oil paints and slathered daubs of saturated colors all over the mountains. Pictures could never capture what it was like when I finally stopped: the clean air, the apple crisp wind, and the colors of a New England Autumn everywhere.
There was something very restorative for me. I had a hole the size of a man’s hand in my chest that my heart kept falling out of. And my books couldn’t fill it, and my writing couldn’t fill it, not movies, not booze, not tears. But bathing myself in the Autumn light and color purged me and cleansed me and made me feel whole.
I stayed for a few days poking around apple and pear orchards and that is when I realized that Autumn is a woman. Not a une jeune fille or sultry bombshell, but a woman. Mature and wise, dressed in rich winey reds and forest greens; crimson and amber; velvet and satin with gold jewelry on her wrists and ears. With wee touches of soft grey here and there. As I walked through an orchard I saw her leaning against a tree. She was holding a basket filled with produce and offered be a pear. I took it and when I bit in it was sweet and full of juice that tasted like optimism dipped in tears.
I knew then, the mountains could do nothing more for me.
So I turned my car south, homeward and when I got there it felt like my home again and not just a place to hide and lick my wounds.
Autumn Day
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.
Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.
Rainer Maria Rilke
