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Black as Night

When rain drops fall and you feel lowAh, do you ever think it’s uselessDo you ever feel like letting goDo you ever sit and do you wonderWill the world ever changeAnd just how long will it takeTo have it all rearranged
Tell me why these things are still the sameTell me why no one can seem to learn from mistakes

Fear not, brave and courageous readers who have come back for more! This fall won’t be all doom and gloom, for fall has its sultry enchantments and lighter moments of whimsy as well. A linky look back at previous fall entries should allay you of any one-note worries – and everyone knows I would bore myself silly if I were to cloak myself in shrouds of black and not even dip into the jewel tones. This is still the long and winding road that leads to the salvation sometimes found in the holidays. While that salvation feels like a lofty and unattainable goal at the moment, it can’t hurt to try. Well, it can, and it will, but that won’t stop me. Let’s have that look back at other fall entries that started off the season not so long ago…

Fall often begins in light and ends in shadow – a fertile playground for deeper rumination and analysis, but also for leaning into the shorter days, the bracingly-jarring mornings of the first few frosts, the seriousness that ensues now that summer is officially over. Such a difficult time – no one wants summer to end – and so we try to find places of solace and moments of peace to assuage what we might be feeling. A song then, for this moment of desperation.

Take my hand if you don’t know where you’re goin’I’ll understand, I’ve lost the way myselfOh, don’t take that old road it leads to nowhereWe must leave before the clock strikes twelve

Sometimes fall has to burn, to take everything that is drying and dying and burn it all to the ground. Such fires can be brilliant and dazzling, or dim and disturbing – all glowing embers and fading glory. Fall burns brighter than any other time of the year – it’s in the flaming trees, in the smoke of burning leaves, in the cricket song of the nights. The burn goes deep.

While I don’t mind a fall fire, I also embrace the softer and brighter sort of days that early autumn still affords. Whether in a colorful scarf or string of beads, the colors of fall appear more saturated than even spring or summer.

If you could read my mind… well, no one wants to go there, not even if it is fall.

But if you could read my mind maybe that would make things better

Telling conundrum. 

Fall snaps us back into reality, whether we want it or not. It forces us to get a little more serious again, with work and school and the logistical nightmare of survival. Still, fall carries its own enchantments too, and they can be soothing and charming. Fall pushes and fall pulls, and fall will not be stuffed into submission. It knows its power, and it can be reinvigorating

So it shall be, and so we shall welcome fall with all her requisite wonder and magic, hoping she won’t treat us too harshly, hoping we can make it through her maelstroms, her obstacles, her storms and her shadows. 

It’s so easy to do nothin’When you’re busy night and dayTake a step in one directionAnd take a step the other waySo don’t stop tryin’ when you stumbleDon’t give up should you fallKeep on searchin’ for the passwayThat will lead you through the wallDon’t look back or you’ll be left behindDon’t look back or you will never find peace of mind

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