Contrast: The Sinews of Life
The sun was out briefly, but not nearly out enough to warm the ground beneath my feet. As I walked over the
concrete and tar that leads from my door to the street, I was aware that warming myself would have to come
from entirely inside, unlike just a few months ago when I could shower and walk to the deck wrapped in a turkish
towel and simply smile at the sun and wait for it to dry me; now the power & the energy would have to come from me
to stay warm.
In New England we are blessed with the seasons--four of them to separate the deep cold blues from the wide warm orange and
yellows. The in-between seasons act as a kind of dress rehearsal for summer and winter, the two king pins of our nor-east climate.
But for many of us who grew here, or even for some of us who were transported here, spring and autumn can hold not
only great promise, but they can in themselves become a favorite time of the year.
The fickle new englander wakes to each season with a sense of being with a new lover---ahhhhh, we say, this is my favorite season.
October has gone and when October goes and the harvest moon shines it's fabulous face down on earth, we must be a certain
kind of sad. The kind of sad that blends with nostalgia and form memories that many us smile just before we remember that
that is a time gone by and that what is left of it must be savored as a cherished gift that eventually wore it self out from
over use. It is not as if the memory ever really dies, it is rather that it sustains a different part of us that the part of us
that live in the moment of autumn...
Summer had a spring in it step and a wild abandon in its mornings. We had all the time in the world to warm ourselves from
early in the morning to late into the summer nights. The memory dances within our minds like sun drops dance on a
summer shore. The mona lisa like smile erupts into a permanent reminder that keeping a subtle smile on our faces helps us
and other around us to stay connected to the most important aspect of who we are--our deeper instincts rather than our
more familiar egoic impulses.
Autumn in New England slowly gives way to the impermanence that without our well-being smile we dread. The very
idea of our impermanence can lock away our instincts as surely as can an addiction. As creatures of impermanence we have
a kindred spirit in the universe. Our ocean is some several million years old and has a life cycle that will probably last as
much as several hundred-thousand more years before the sun burns it up and evaporates it into a cloud of steam. Even the
ocean my original constant factor has a cycle of life that had a beginning, has a middle and will have an end.
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