When I was a teenager and young man autumn was my favourite season. My romantic soul was drawn to the melancholy of the declining days, the chill slipping into the spaces left by a fractured summer. The poetry of the winking street lamps and the sky sunk in a gloominess that suffocates the too early evenings like an old London smog.
I would take walks around the neighbourhood, wrapped up against the cold and peering enviously into the warm yellow homes of neighbours. Returning home to the warmth, a hot drink, a sense of childhood sustained for one more year. The sense of loss was a strange shiver of happiness. Fast forward - as life appears to do - twenty years and I am forty years old and enjoying spring for the first time. The punch of new greens in the parks, the sharp green blades of grass and suddenly unfurled leaves - a fresh reminder that life returns. The tulips and daffodils spearing through frosted earth; a gift of colour after months of austere blandness. A new romance for the middle age of life when you sense the sad truth of autumnal melancholy. Now a few years older I am less in need to fix my loyalties to a specific season. I am more interested in the subtle moments between seasons as they bleed into each other. This year, in late spring, in the Graubunden Alps, the crickets sang as the evening emptied. They taught me in each chirrup: the males beckoning Natural Selection with their rubbing legs. A similar repeating moment of cicada music in the shade of two parallel rows of hundred year old chestnut trees lining the Medieval wall of Lucca, Italy. The mountains have been teaching me with their stony wisdom; their beauty towers throughout the seasons, the decades. I have heard the music reflected off the lakes: the slow strings of time and tectonic percussion. The mountain valleys spell ancient words with their cursive peaks. As you grow older you appreciate the beauty is all the seasons, in all the little moments you have, in all the music and colours, in all that is gained and lost.
1 Comment
Mike Usuka, Denise,s Dad
10/19/2019 05:14:25 pm
I admire you, able to put into words the thoughts of most people
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AuthorA poetic-essay style blog with a limit of 365 words. 365 like the days of the year - my name being one of those days! Archives
March 2020
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