We are just a few hours away from the autumnal equinox. In South Florida, where I live, one must be very alert to sense the passage of the seasons. We don't have the change in leaf color, but we do have a shift of the sun as it slips further to the south, making the shadows longer in certain parts of parking lots.
We don't have a change in the temperature. In some years, we see increased hurricane activity as we get closer to the autumnal equinox, but that marker isn't a clear delineation either.
I used to joke that I knew autumn was upon us when we got the first cinnamon brooms in the produce section of the grocery store, but this year, we've only gotten a few, and they must be left over from last year. They didn't fill their corner of the store with fragrance.
Just a few days ago, I did see pumpkins, but they were in a cardboard display box that had once held watermelons. I know, because the box proclaimed the goodness of watermelon season, a season that has already faded.
We've been able to get apples year round, along with watermelon. We no longer seem to have seasonal produce, although if you wanted to buy a whole pumpkin in May, in my part of the U.S. you wouldn't find them.
I do try to keep certain activities/foods/decorations for certain seasons, just so that I have some way of marking them. I now have autumnal table top trees to go with my Christmas ones. In the off season, as I look up from my work desk to the back of the file cabinet where I store them, it looks like a delightful forest, a different kind of enchanted wood.
During these pandemic days, many of us have experienced the slipping of time, when one day bleeds into the next, when we're not sure if we're supposed to be at work or assisting with school or trying to fall asleep. Those of us who live in parts of the country where the seasons don't march on with vim and vigor understand this slippage all too well.
Today is a good day to pause and think about the season that's passing and the one that's about to start. It's a good time to offer some thanks for what the summer season has given us and to reflect upon our hopes and yearnings for the next 3 months.
I have been feeling somewhat scattered--not quite as scattered as I was feeling in March and April, but still not quite settled. I want to get back to better writing practices: writing more poems and sending more poems out into the world. I want to start appreciating the beauty that's around me more: bouquets of flowers and the birds overhead and the foliage that may not match my autumnal yearnings. I want to continue with the spiritual practices that ground me (morning watch, sketching) and to keep reading 1 chapter in the book of John each morning--I've felt that practice wanting to slide away from me.
It's going to be a tough quarter or two as we head towards the election and its aftermath, the time when pathogens start to get the upper hand. Let us hold firm to the practices that ground us while remembering all of our yearnings that are yet to be fulfilled.
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