Autumn is a complicated time of year, in my experience. It can be absolutely glorious, without question. It can also be unrelenting, aggressive, and brutal.
You never quite know what you’re going to get, and when, with the fall. Even the beauty sneaks up on you — not many trees are changing their colors yet, but then you drive around a bend and are accosted by a flash of bright purple here, a puddle of yellow there. Like a jump scare in a horror film, but without the scare, the horror, or the film.
Maybe that’s not my best metaphor. I’ll work on it.
As much as it marks the beginning of another school year, it’s also the final full season of the calendar year. It’s the final turn of the wheel. It’s Q4. It’s the time when the clock is ticking to the deadline of everything you said you were going to accomplish since purchasing your last wall calendar. Who am I kidding — that clock isn’t just ticking, it’s pure percussion at this point, and the drumskin is tearing. An ever-accelerating march toward the end of another year that has so much left undone.
Did I mention I find this time of year quite lovely?
Autumn is about vibrancy and darkness. It’s comforting and unsettling. It’s a fresh start and a slippery slope to the end.
There was frost on the grass this morning as I drove into work. That’s my cue to cut down the flowers languishing in my front yard. I always feel like I’m giving up on them, like I’m engaging in euthanasia, despite the fact that the majority of them are already dead — there are always a few stragglers, begging me to put them out of their misery. There, there, I mutter to them, as I chop their heads off.
Really, though, if I were to look beyond the hackety hacks and the achoos, the cotton mouth and the sandpaper eyelids, the deadlines and the should have beens, the lingering dark — I suspect I would recognize that this time of year isn’t that complicated after all. I suspect I would find that I’m quite enjoying myself, thank you very much, Madam Equinox. Thank you very much indeed.
I wonder if I’ll ever do that.
Muttering Retreats 