The wind rustles through the weeping willow, and the sound is more redolent of fall than summer or spring. On the bank of a pond, water birds stand sentinel, their shadows only outlined silhouettes. Remnants of a hurricane echoing along the Northeast coast have drifted inland, and the boughs of trees sway and shift in the temperate night wind.
Something spooky is in the air. Is is really there? Or is it just this time of the year, when change is in the atmosphere? Witches might be flying above the cloud-cover, or that might just be the echoes of the hurricane – who can truly tell? And if you believe the former, wouldn’t the effects of the latter simply back it up? One misguided belief leads to another. The truth, in its infuriating way, refuses to be anything but elusive. Why it should be so hard to pin down is one of life’s more unsatisfying mysteries.
When faced with such a mystery, I find it best to set it to music, and this particular selection straddles the strange undulating border between summer and fall, when chilly nights bleed into striking days, and questions survive only in a world of blue.
Watching the swaying of the willow branches, I’m brought back to those mysteries of life. In most instances they can be traced back to mysteries of love – all the stories somehow come back to love. For some us lucky enough to find escape in the stories we read as children, the wind in the willows sounded a portal to a different world. I still believe in such magic, even if the method to attain entrance is markedly different, and more a better of perspective and mindfulness than actual doors or wardrobes or ships of seedpods to other realms. When the vessel is merely a matter of mind over material, it opens up worlds not limited to the imagination. That expands things to an extent that makes many uncomfortable.
The willow tree is no longer just a willow tree.
It’s a big furry monster that will either warm you with a big embracing hug, or devour you with tendrils studded with thorns, pulling you into a mouth that is only darkness and impossible pain.
Fall will light it up soon enough, one way or another.
