drmstream[writing]

I am on the couch on the porch. The morn­ing is humid, but not chilled. The night is eas­ing off. It is about 7 am on Sun­day morning.

Char­lie just scur­ried off to the front dri­ve­way to check some­thing out. Bella heeded my admo­ni­tion to stay.

The organic mat­ter in the yard is begin­ning to wither. The gar­den is turn­ing mot­tled and brown. The sea grass is gath­er­ing its rust col­ors in uneven blotches up and down its shoots. The trees have lost the rich green vital­ity of sum­mer. Some have leaves that have turned. Oth­ers are begin­ning a pro­gres­sion that will shift into bril­liant col­ors, the sug­ars trans­form­ing in a riotous attempt to nour­ish the hun­gry cells. The cycle has changed phases, but in this early part of the phase, the sequenc­ing is halt­ing and out of sync.

The roman­tic notion is that the dif­fer­ent species of plants are strug­gling to stave off winter’s slum­ber. The prac­ti­cal real­ity is that the cel­lu­lar com­po­si­tion of each class of organic mat­ter processes the cli­mate change asso­ci­ated with the pass­ing of the sea­sons dif­fer­ently. The fac­tors are pri­mar­ily light and tem­per­a­ture. The process is influ­enced by the pres­ence of nutri­ents in the soil, of the vit­a­min D and other chem­i­cals asso­ci­ated with sun­light. The plants then respond in a fash­ion pred­i­cated on the recent cli­matic pat­tern, and in a sequence pro­duced by mil­le­ni­ums of evolution.

Sit­ting here on the porch, the chang­ing col­ors of the leaves and the wilt­ing of the gar­den makes me aware that fewer morn­ings will come that are com­fort­able enough to sit out­side. Already, I’ve made some small adjust­ments to the weather: I am wear­ing shoes and have put on a fleece to keep away the slight chill in the air. The aware­ness that the inven­tory of morn­ings is expir­ing explains a shit in tone and per­cep­tion. I think about how I can change my cir­cum­stances so that I can sit on this couch, have cof­fee and write even when the air is too cold for com­fort. What gloves can I use that can hold a pen, I won­der? Another sequence of images are acti­vated: the change of win­ter, the long quiet spell, the forc­ing inside of our activ­ity. Impres­sions, faint mem­o­ries, a feel­ing of get­ting ready, because the win­ter brings us all closer, reduces the things to do. While I write those last sen­tences, I recall brac­ing win­ter walks, punch­ing my hik­ing boots through the snow crust.

Again, a roman­tic notion hangs at the mar­gin. With fall comes decay, with win­ter death, with spring rebirth. I am at a birth­day that is the por­tal to fall, the autumn of life, a 50th birth­day. And I have taken very poor care of my body this past year. The expir­ing inven­tory of days, the cycli­cal decay of my body, are seduc­tive metaphors: they can feed a melan­choly that staves off the com­mit­ment to expe­ri­ence the dis­com­fort that will come with chang­ing my habits and improv­ing my phys­i­cal condition.

Fall is the nat­ural cycle of decay after an explo­sion of nat­ural abun­dance. Win­ter is the time of regen­er­a­tion, to pre­pare for the return of con­di­tions for growth and birth. Death is the inter­rup­tion of the cycles. Until death, our nature is to pass through each cycle. Our expe­ri­ence can make each cycle more com­pelling for its experience.