Autumn Illusion – In The Sun
My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.—Robert Frost
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Flip the page. Start a new week. No longer are we talking about a once great magazine soon to be relegated to memory, like the formerly dominant titles, Life or Look, neither of which anyone under the age of 50 is likely to remember. Seasons pass, times, change, and their passing isn’t always what we expect of them.
Recent weeks have been dry and yesterday’s attempt at rain did little more than taunt a parched ground with a hope that never came. Not here. Instead, random gusts of wind blew swirls of dust down the sidewalk like a small dog taking its human for a walk; the wind yapped and howled at everything it saw while the dust impatiently meandered along.
Autumn is definitely here. She’s solemn this year, quiet, thoughtful in her actions. While she has moments of being bright and vivid, they come randomly; more are they punctuations of color rather than whole sentences. Drive down a road full of brown and there’s suddenly a comma of red. A little further down the road one finds an em dash of bright orange. The punctuation is glorious and appears in careful spaces just often enough to give one a sense of autumn, but all that lies between is a meaningless jumble of disappointment.[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]There is a point at which all the photographs of autumn run together. Maple leaves, so resplendent in their colorful stage show, perform the same act year after year after year. Was that photo taken in 2009 or 2012? I can’t tell. Although, one might argue that it doesn’t actually matter. Photographs we miss this year we can try again when the numbers on the calendar are different. Does it really make that much difference?
Who else feels that autumn arrived already exhausted, like that great aunt who has been traveling for a month trying to see everyone in the family? When she finally arrives at your house, the excitement she once held for her trip is already gone. The car broke down. Her favorite blouse ripped. Cousin George’s dog crapped in her shoes.
Flip the page. Who knows what may happen? Certainly, things will be different than they were last week, and different than ever before, but different doesn’t seem to matter. Will this week be sexy, or artistic, or just a poetic mess that no one really understands? Autumn is full of illusions and today is one of them.[/one_half_last]
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