I walked yesterday through the West End of Portland, as a wild wind blew. It was a strangely warm day for early October and a full spectrum of red, crimson, yellow and green leaves were spinning in circles. Pumpkins lay on doorsteps and there was this kind of funny, wild energy to the air, like the Wicked Witch of the West was conjuring something.
I walked along, through empty, winding streets with rich wet clumps of brilliant yellow lining the pavements and the cast of red trees against Victorian wooden homes. There were few people out because of the intermittent rain. But squirrels were in full nut-catching mode - I saw about five playing games of disappearance as I strode on by.
Everywhere I looked was motion: leaves filling the atmosphere, pulsing trees pushing sound in walls into my ears. It occurred to me that fall is truly astonishing... but then it occurred to me that only a few months ago I was admiring the start of summer, and before that the miraculous sping. And that what I love so much about living in New England is it's seasons. It's a constant song of change.
I grew up in a cement city. I grew up in only very mild seasonal shifts, where a half hour marked the difference in a setting sun from December to July. We lived in a false pretense of permanence. It messed up our minds a bit. It made the incoming tide of change in our own microcosm lives seem so entirely unnatural. It made us continually stride towards the sun.
Yet none of that permanence is evident here. The true reality of things, their impermance, their shifting forms and continual recreation --never remaining in their state for very long---is revealed in the falling leaves, in the white snows that come with winter gales. Everything is constantly re-forming and re-imagining itself. This is the truth, and a walk through New England fall leaves shows you that.
By the time I got to the Western Prom, I was electric with delight. This wild wind moving through me and I stood on the porch of my friend's house--staring out into the sky and marveling at the trees shaking their multi-colored leaves free.
I would like to stay and watch this transformation, but today is the day I get ready to board a plane and fly off on my travels around the world. And as I sat here with my morning tea, reading the amazing new Maine College of Art viewbook that I am taking with me (as my journey to Asia is to do projects for them), I happened upon a quote -- that said it all. In the words of the great American realist painter, Andrew Wyeth:
"There's a feeling that, yes,
you're seeing something that's happening momentarily,
but it's also a symbol of what has always happened in Maine.
The eternity of a moment."
Photo credit: Chris Glass, Wiki Commons
Everywhere I looked was motion: leaves filling the atmosphere, pulsing trees pushing sound in walls into my ears. It occurred to me that fall is truly astonishing... but then it occurred to me that only a few months ago I was admiring the start of summer, and before that the miraculous sping. And that what I love so much about living in New England is it's seasons. It's a constant song of change.
I grew up in a cement city. I grew up in only very mild seasonal shifts, where a half hour marked the difference in a setting sun from December to July. We lived in a false pretense of permanence. It messed up our minds a bit. It made the incoming tide of change in our own microcosm lives seem so entirely unnatural. It made us continually stride towards the sun.
Yet none of that permanence is evident here. The true reality of things, their impermance, their shifting forms and continual recreation --never remaining in their state for very long---is revealed in the falling leaves, in the white snows that come with winter gales. Everything is constantly re-forming and re-imagining itself. This is the truth, and a walk through New England fall leaves shows you that.
By the time I got to the Western Prom, I was electric with delight. This wild wind moving through me and I stood on the porch of my friend's house--staring out into the sky and marveling at the trees shaking their multi-colored leaves free.
I would like to stay and watch this transformation, but today is the day I get ready to board a plane and fly off on my travels around the world. And as I sat here with my morning tea, reading the amazing new Maine College of Art viewbook that I am taking with me (as my journey to Asia is to do projects for them), I happened upon a quote -- that said it all. In the words of the great American realist painter, Andrew Wyeth:
"There's a feeling that, yes,
you're seeing something that's happening momentarily,
but it's also a symbol of what has always happened in Maine.
The eternity of a moment."
Photo credit: Chris Glass, Wiki Commons
