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Have you seen it?
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When else do boisterous clouds get massacred on the horizon?
When else do trees dye their color, intrigued and inspired by the remains of the once proud and lazy Cumulonimbus carcasses?
When else can you admire the sun without her making you cry?
It is an awesome time, my friend. Not “some” time, as in: it’s like any other part of the year, no. Not even “some” time as in: oh, this has happened before. It’s more “awe” than anything else. A silent stretched out awe, the sneaky breath that slips unnoticed from your lips; or rather, the weak-willed and knock-kneed breath that’s too innocent to help but be stolen from your very lungs,
that kind of awe.
This time of the year is loud, raucous, and exuberant, but in a noble and silent way. You may say, oh, now that’s just an oxymoron, nothing can be loud and silent at the same time, but you, my friend, are wrong.
This…
can.
The once angry skies of harsh azure and endless heat have softened, melted, into a quiet tranquil kind of face of gray, a face that’s gentle without smiling. It likes to breathe softly, as if every breath were a blessing and you can feel it, feel the cold breath paint roses on your cheeks. Then there are times when the sky laughs so hard that its cries split the air in twain, scatter its many tens of thousands of tears across the land, and roll across the terrain as if mountains themselves have torn themselves up from their roots and were rolling around on the ground in unrestrained chuckles.
Thunderous and loud, my friend, but quiet and serene at the same time. Do you see? Do you need more? I can give that.
Here, listen closer,
closer… In another place, underneath your very feet, actually, the once talkative earth has subsided into nothing but giggles, cackles of laughter, and bouts of mirth, catching wind of the sky’s joke, crackles of leaves and branch. But silent, it can be too, silent enough so it can listen carefully to the sky to hear its stories of rain. Besides, have you ever really gotten familiar with the ground? If you haven’t, you should. Really. Although the earth can be clingy, hug onto your shoes and try to climb aboard the hackles of your pants, once you actually embrace it and lie with it, lie silent and still, you can understand that its company is rather comfortable, rather nice. Its musty smell of gathered rain and dried leaf, is calming, its own fragrance. There you can also listen with the quiet ground to the sky’s stories and daydream.
Sometimes the trees get in the way, eager to listen to the overcast sky as well. They don halos of gold and cloaks of red, dyed with the very colors of dusk, to celebrate some histrionic tree holiday that lasts only for a few weeks, after which they bare themselves, naked, for rebirth. But until then, they are drunk with harvest ales and quiet with deep thought. But the amazing thing is that when stand together in matching outfits of crimson and amber, which they do often, they speak in tongues of silence so no one else can hear their secret words. Even if you stand underneath them, eager for them to drop a word of their ancient conversation, you will only ever receive a drop of their crowns and handkerchiefs.
Most amazing, though, during this time of the year, only this time…More amazing than the sky’s gentility, more amazing than the laughter of the ground, more amazing than the festivities of the woods, more amazing than raining tears, splitting thunder, snapping lightning, or even dusk-colored leaves, raw smells, nature’s firecrackers, or even vast fields of mustard flowers, the curtains of mist, and the comfort of a world wrapped in home-knit fleece of gray cotton clouds…Most amazing, out of all these things…
…Are the sunsets.
Never, during any other time of the year, are the sunsets so amazing, intense and dramatic, splayed across the western sky in splashes of dying fire, painted on canvases of clouds, spread, stretched, ballooned, in the brightest of colors from a palette filled with amber, wild-berries, and flame. They are so vast that they swallow you up, yes. Yes, they do. They swallow you up, hypnotize you, spirit you away to a place where all you can see are those colors as if they were imprinted upon the very fine film of your very eyes. Then, before you know it…It’s faded away into ocean-deep hues of obsidian and sapphire. It's gone.
That, my friend, is Autumn. Have you seen it?...I mean, have you
really experienced it?
I have.
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