The Scarlet Courier

My!! Don’t I write so sparingly and intermittently! No, that doesn’t make me lazy. That makes me a woman with a lot of social life that keeps me so busy that I cannot get anywhere close to a computer other than to look up directions to go to all the places I go. NOT!! Most of the time I just spend blowing thought bubbles into the air, which burst the moment they come in contact with reality, or drift away into the unknown sempiternity or just get weighed down to the ground.

‘Weighing down’ brings back to memory the lovely scenery I saw this morning on the way to work. All along the way. The scenery of Fall. It is the most beautiful season of the year, my favorite. If you remove all the connotations of looming winter on the heels, leaves falling away from the trees turning them starkly bare in a few weeks, etc, the picture Fall presents in isolation is very eye-pleasing. The fact that it lasts only a few weeks makes it precious. A few days ago, early in the morning while driving to work I stop at a signal light. A leaf floats in the air, drifting in and out of my attention and slowly settles down on the car’s windshield, getting caught in place by the wipers, shielding it from the indecisive wind. A sugar maple leaf, I observe. It had a scarlet tinge along the border, the veins all sticking out in a bright red on an orange background, remnants of green still lingering here and there. A miniature beauty! Nature’s color palette!!

The colors are just startling and can even wake me up on a slow Thursday morning. The Sunset Maple turning a nice red in the early sunrise, the bluish purplish colors of the Blackhaws, the golden hue of the River Birch, and other reluctant trees that stand proudly green. It is just the beginning of Fall. The colors started peeping out slowly like naughty little boys around the corner of the street. Then one day it will suddenly be out there, like waking up into a vibrant dream, colors bursting out and exploding brightly from every tree on the street, the woods beckoning for a peek. I look forward with anticipated curiosity again this year.

Fall to me is symbolic of so many things. The trees teach a silent quasi-Buddhist philosophy. Of unprejudiced detachment, of letting go without malice. As the leaves fall one by one from the magnificent trees, I never notice a tremor, or an uncertainty in the bearing of the tree. Just a little rustle of the leaves as the tree gives into the gentle breeze accepting graciously what is inevitable.

Fall also reminds me of the cycle of life. The leaves turn color and leave the trees one by one, leaving the tree alone and naked. All the color leaves the tree but for an earthy brown, a color of patience and forbearing. If one knew the tree from the happy spring and summer times, it would seem like the end of the world for the tree, but then Spring comes with all its vigor, bringing back all the lost color, only livelier than before. Nothing is permanent, neither winter nor summer, is what Fall preaches me.

Anyways, coming back to what I started with, I am not lazy; I am just preparing for the winter. J I am hoping my non-blogging season is coming to an end and winter brings out more desire to write in earnestness.