The Fall Phoenix.
October 10, 2019.
It gets dark now at six, no later than six-thirty. I know this not only because I have the ability to read time and perceive day and night then correlate the two complex concepts but because it's Thursday. On Thursdays I usually ride the 9:20 train from North Station but tonight I left class early, running to get on the 6:30 Lowell Line (not my usual) and it is already dark.
Dark like how you'd think early October is to be dark; maroon, cider, bark of changing trees, mud and murky water. Not dark like late October where the word creeps like an emotional fear of headless horsemen and flicking, rotting gourds.
Fall enters our lives quickly and in bursts. It's my favorite season however often it's overshadowed with bipolar weather of summer still trying to shine, winter wanting to cry, and rain's desire to parade because spring wasn't enough. But is that fall? Maybe my idea of fifty degree weather, denim jackets and corduroy was a facade and all year long what I have convinced myself to be a my favorite season is really just a drizzle flu with a few authentic "fall" days intertwined within the 80 degree and rainy ones. Maybe I was holding onto my fall childhood of two-hand touch football with Matt, Tommy and Lauren running through the length of Matt yard where a duck once came down to watch and chase us, and our hands and lips would chap once the sun went down before we would get called home from our mothers. The fall were food tasted richer, potatoes in the form of Shepards pie with cornbread or in a vegetable soup instead of potato wedges or chips by a poolside or traveling in a car. The smell of apple and cinnamon instead of sweat and fresh cut grass, though I love the smell of fresh cut grass and although the grass would be cut in the fall, the cold weather wouldn't allow it to linger. As kids fall would mean going to school, but school meant seeing my friends and I wasn't a poor student it was just the structure and the advanced placements, I think that bothered me. Fall also meant dying pine needles. On the car, the streets, hair and in the soles of our shoes. They covered our lawns depicting a giant orangoutang blanketing the neighborhood. This time of year also meant The Peanuts with Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy and the gang, a tradition of The Great Pumpkin that has since faded in my family, but one I held close growing up, but I wouldn't let others know how much it meant at the time.
This fall I am twenty-two. Correction or not, I will be twenty-two during the fall, at the beginning of the fall I was twenty-one, I will be leaving the fall with a digit change. My birthday is in late October, but not the reason fall is my favorite season for we don't celebrate my birthday, and all of my siblings have fall birthdays as well so it's not a special time of year for me. However, as I'm older fall is viewed as renewal. Fall is viewed as flames. I like fall because it is not trying to be anything, it just is. It is life, it is death, it is color, and it is grey. And as stated it is flames, of leaves changing to saturated reds, oranges, yellows and the dying browns crumpling at our feet but flames like a phoenix as these dying leaves will leave nutrients in the earths surfaces for next season - or at least that's what I've always thought and am too stuck in my way to look it up to see or accept another idea.
Fall starts the season of Halloween, a time to dress up allowing ourselves to be whomever we'd like for a few hours, discovering a new identity if we'd like in a sense of expression renewal. Thanksgiving (in the United States) comes next, a time to reflect on the western civilization coming here and building towns, cities, and foundations that would build ours on and a feast they'd share with the original founders of this land, or so we're told through our lives, but history will tell us that Thanksgiving is about the first harvest of the pilgrims, it is also a day of mourning for the Natives and mourning is it's own ritual of renewal. The idea of Thanksgiving has been turned into a holiday of giving thanks throughout the presidents of George Washington then Abe Lincoln, then good Ol' Hallmark, which is what we often observe now. The holiday is the gunshot that marks the start of a the holiday race. During this feast we redeem ourselves by showing gratitude one might not throughout the year and continue to show this generosity, or are inspired to, through the rest of the holiday season until winter brings the ultimate time renewal holiday of New Years Day. So fall is the ashes that are gathered in the bottom a blanket bundled, hot cider bonfire that are still hot enough to spark new life to start a new flame.
-L
This fall I am twenty-two. Correction or not, I will be twenty-two during the fall, at the beginning of the fall I was twenty-one, I will be leaving the fall with a digit change. My birthday is in late October, but not the reason fall is my favorite season for we don't celebrate my birthday, and all of my siblings have fall birthdays as well so it's not a special time of year for me. However, as I'm older fall is viewed as renewal. Fall is viewed as flames. I like fall because it is not trying to be anything, it just is. It is life, it is death, it is color, and it is grey. And as stated it is flames, of leaves changing to saturated reds, oranges, yellows and the dying browns crumpling at our feet but flames like a phoenix as these dying leaves will leave nutrients in the earths surfaces for next season - or at least that's what I've always thought and am too stuck in my way to look it up to see or accept another idea.
Fall starts the season of Halloween, a time to dress up allowing ourselves to be whomever we'd like for a few hours, discovering a new identity if we'd like in a sense of expression renewal. Thanksgiving (in the United States) comes next, a time to reflect on the western civilization coming here and building towns, cities, and foundations that would build ours on and a feast they'd share with the original founders of this land, or so we're told through our lives, but history will tell us that Thanksgiving is about the first harvest of the pilgrims, it is also a day of mourning for the Natives and mourning is it's own ritual of renewal. The idea of Thanksgiving has been turned into a holiday of giving thanks throughout the presidents of George Washington then Abe Lincoln, then good Ol' Hallmark, which is what we often observe now. The holiday is the gunshot that marks the start of a the holiday race. During this feast we redeem ourselves by showing gratitude one might not throughout the year and continue to show this generosity, or are inspired to, through the rest of the holiday season until winter brings the ultimate time renewal holiday of New Years Day. So fall is the ashes that are gathered in the bottom a blanket bundled, hot cider bonfire that are still hot enough to spark new life to start a new flame.
-L
