Wednesday, April 10, 2013

This Might Be September (I'm 45)

We always compare our lives to things, and things to our lives. Metaphors. Riddles. Remember this one? What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? That's what the Sphinx asked Perseus.

Today, I compare my life to a year. The seasons, the months. Common enough metaphor. But right now I'm actually comparing my life to a year. And that creates a new level of perception.

The year started in early spring. Everyone who has ever given it serious thought knows that the year doesn't really start in January. A year begun in January is artificial, a misconception of measurement of a year imposed by rational thought and an obsessive need to delineate practically. The year doesn't really begin until spring.

That being said:

This isn't April. April is a dim memory of newness and danger, so far back to be barely remembered as only a time of joy and all inherent unpleasantness of newness forgotten.

This is not May. This isn't the first greenery showing signs of growth. This isn't crocuses peeking through the last snow. This isn't the bud of leaves or Robert Frost's gold. May is long past.

This isn't June. Spoon, moon, June. This isn't the season of early love, of sap coursing strongly in the tree, of outrageous growth and new developments. June is a beautiful time, but there is also pain there, then, at that time. The first love, the first heartbreak, containing both the wondrous beauty of a June storm, and also the destructive power.

This is not July, hot and dangerous. When the hot days create a dangerous languor that erupts into foolishness in the nights, careless risks and crazy ideas brought to perilous fruition. The joy of stupidity blossoms darkly in the soft warm July nights.

This is not August. August, the month when the heat has sucked the juices almost dry, when growth has stopped and the first hint comes that any changes coming may not be improvements.

This is probably September. There is a coolness, almost refreshing, and if there is no new growth, then there is a temporary reprieve. The rains come, but they are different rains, not the rains of spring that bring growth, but the rains that soothe, the rains that replenish in different ways, the rains that prepare for a harsher season. This might be September, when the thought of winter becomes reality, when the coolness settles in and brings goosebumps in a not unpleasant way.

There is also the chance, though, that this is October. The imaginary line may have been crossed to the time when the leaves are not yet crisp but no longer green, when they begin to come to earth and there is no turning back, when energies are gathered in different ways, when the green has gone and other means of surviving show themselves as very real in different colors and with a different light.

This is not yet November. November is coming, but is not yet here. November, when the crunch of leaves
underfoot drowns out the silence left behind by a void of something missing, something gone that was intangible but will be sorely missed. The full impact of November hasn't been felt yet, and as with all things not yet experienced, cannot be fully described.

Nor is this December. The time of quiet reflection in front of a warm but too distant fire. This is not the time of the intrinsic calidity known in July and August long gone, replaced by heat from an external source, not quite the same. A heat that doesn't push to action but to inaction and reflection.

This is not January or February, when all is still. This isn't March. March is so far off and so strange that the changes to come can't even be comprehended.

This might be September.


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