Autumn's Coming

Autumn is my favorite season. I was raised in New England, where Autumn is iconic. My little home town nestled in the Berkshire mountains, near towns with little white clapboard churches that stand in stark contrast to the robust explosion of color of the hills that surround them. Autumn has begun to creep up on us - with some vines and some young saplings starting to turn -- and with the return of chilly evenings and nights. Soon there will be frost and the whole coloration process will start galloping down the east coast. The abundance of sugar maples in the northeast cause a great deal of the brighter red colors not seen everywhere.

Each year I start almost itching for autumn to arrive. I love it. I am happiest by far in autumn. Life feels possible in every way in autumn. I don't know why. It has always been so for me. The years that I lived in non-autumnal areas (by Massachusetts standards) brought sadness at this time of year as I missed the changing of leaves so keenly -- but I would still always manage to get this deep hit of autumn that revitalized me.

The season brings forth so much -- scent-memories of fallen leaves buring (before city ordinaces banned the practice) in big burning barrels, or the sight of morning frost still light on the tips of grass, roadside stands full of pumpkins, gourds and Indian corn, yards decorated with cornstalks and jack-o-lanterns, and everywhere this mass riot of color exploding from every corner.

Nature goes mad in autumn, tosses her head and flings her tresses in our faces. In Autumn we learn the passionate, musky, rutting, earthy difference between Eros and Agape. It isn't like the sweet longings of innocent spring. Oh no, autumn is the Harvest of that longing, the bittersweet culmination of the best of what Nature has wanted and waited for through the other three seasons.

This is the time to find a patch of the earth to hurl oneself upon, and to hold it close, to press up against the earth that sustains us. This is when our heartbeats can perfectly match the heartbeat of the earth.

Press.

Listen.