A new season doesn’t always begin with a bang, just as most New Year Days are quiet and simple mornings of reflection and contemplation. This fall feels small in that way, in a very good way, because after a year and a half of this madness a quiet little entry into a new season is the most comforting way to approach change. We’ve all been through a lot, and the world has collectively been traumatized. That’s something we have only begun to realize, and I’m concerned that the effects will linger far longer than most of us realize.
That said, this site has never been one to sound the doomsday clock, or to watch it tick down to danger without offering some fantastic alternative of escapist frivolity and nonsense with which to divert our harried minds. To that end, let’s enter this fall season with a little intrigue and mystery, a colorful reigniting of passions after a summer, drained and devoid of many pleasures, fades into shades of gray.
A scarf dances in the wind, alighting on a dogwood heavy with its own fruit, which is still no match to the super-saturated brightness of this pseudo-silk accessory. How a scarf came to be in the branches of a dogwood is a story likely not worth a telling, much less a re-telling at some later date, and so the mystery shall remain. Fall carries mystery with it, with its expanding darkness, the coolness on the wind, the way it teases you into its early pleasures right before striking it all down in a hard frost. Such a cruel sleight of hand, such a lovely way to burn.
Dancing over to a hydrangea in its own salmon-hued bloom, the scarf winds its way through the garden like a snake, hiding among the branches and blooms that tickle its passing fancy. Fall is tricky like that too, cajoling and nudging us along in sun and splendor until we’ve passed a point of safe return, and then it clamps down its frost-laden nights, freezing the ground and heaving the fields.
The afternoon sunlight on certain September days no longer belongs to summer, and the change is distinct to those who have seen it before. It’s both sharper and gentler, crisp yet supple. Summer gets all the glory, but the real secret is that fall color resonates more deeply. The sky is the bluest it will ever be. The blooms, if there are any repeat bloomers, are smaller but richer in tone and shade. And soon, very soon, the foliage will ignite and burn itself up in autumnal splendor.
For now, though, there is this scarf, and a necklace of fuchsia beads that may or may not come into some greater play sooner or later or never – the fluctuating whims of fall forever prey to fickle behavior and luckless decisions.
I have quite purposely and intentionally left out a fall entry song for the first post of the season – it will arrive later today – so as to allow the thoughts to expand without noise or music or harmony. The sounds of summer – those relentless cicadas, that crackle of fireworks, the giddy shouts of neighborhood children, that goddamn ice cream truck jingle – fade from hearing now. The sun shines quietly, and the only noise comes from the whoosh and whirl of a scarf, carried on the wind, and sounding like a librarian’s wearily repeated ‘shh, shh, shh’ shushing a group of kids who haven’t excised all memory of summer freedom just yet.
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