Does a leaf fall?
No.
Today, it seems to float and flit and lilt and loft and list and waft and finally, very delicately, wend its way slowly and softly to the ground.
And it takes only a few seconds.
Yet for the leaf, does it feel like forever?
And is the landing an anticlimactic thing?
A dead ending?
Or something else?
Yes, the leaves will busily compost and recycle themselves in the soil.
And for me, I am turning over my own labile spirit.
I love the Fall with all the falling.
To me it is as ripe as Summer.
The two are not as much opposites, but they are overlapping, a blending of energies.
The dried grasses surprise with color.
Cinnamon ferns thrive.
Hard, bright red berries peek out from beneath the glossy magnolia leaves.
The pokeweed bulges with deep magenta fruit, ready to drop.
When I was little, my friend Megan and I used to line them up in the cracks of the sidewalk in some sort of game we made up. The berries stained our hands purple for days.
Idle days.
But rich in imagination and purpose.
Today, the last of the hummingbirds sip from the plastic feeder, procrastinating.
And the monarchs and other butterflies lazily drift from one bush to another.
Small clumps of light yellow ones criss-cross the grass like they are playing.
They are in no hurry, and neither am I.
How fast the seasons fly.
I’m feeling better now and I know that I am because I can articulate these things.
I can take pleasure in the mundane.
But my health is always in the balance, an alchemy of grounded-ness mixed with levity.
And the majority of the time, it all works, and I am fine.
But the lessons of Fall are many for me:
Fall shows me that the world is not bipolar, black and white. But rather multicolored, textured and bright.
Circular, orbital, or elliptical.
And Fall may be a study in life and death, but all things come round.
Fall is also a reminder for me to pay attention to the falling leaf, and to reflect on purpose and imagination.
Not to mourn their loss, but to anticipate their revival.
Because depression doesn’t last forever.
It is like a season – one season – and taken by itself it can always be endured.
And if it feels like I am back at the exact same place, over and over again – I am and I’m not.
Even though it is my body’s repetitive natural cycle, every season is distinctly new.
I have to see it that way.
Imagination and purpose:
Like the sweet smoke from the neighbor’s crackling, burning leaf pile,
I will always rise.
