September 22nd is fast approaching and will mark the first full day of autumn and the official end of summer. I must say this has been one of the longest summers I can remember in a while. I have been taking my own little survey and asking people if they thought the summer was long, or if it had gone by fast – no one I asked thought it had gone by quickly. When I asked my daughter she reminded me we were swimming in Gunpowder Falls on her birthday and that was April 6th and it stayed hot so we had almost four and a half months of hot weather.
The weather has finally cooled down and whether or not your have children, the early morning sounds of crickets and school buses trigger our senses and memories signaling the end of summer and the beginning of Fall. I remember walking to school the air cool and crisp and then on the way home in the afternoon feeling overdressed, overheated and a little misplaced. As adults we put on heavy sweatshirts and sweaters with our cold toes still in flip flops, unable to give everything up all at once, defiantly wringing out the last bit of summer we think we are losing, even though most of us were begging for the heat to go away only a few weeks ago. I think we all still feel that awkward shift from one season to another, in some ways a relief and in other ways a grief. That feeling that you are losing what you have but also a pleasure in knowing you are receiving something new in return, quenching our need for growth, expansion and also change.
I think when seasons change, it reminds us of how life changes whether we are ready or not. Like chapters in a book, still the same story but a shift in the focus. As any writer or artist knows, knowing when to stop is key, over writing causes the reader to lose interest and over painting a picture will cause you to lose a detail you can’t seem to recapture. Our experiences are the art of our emotions, they can be a masterpiece or an abstract oddity that only a few appreciate and recognize.
Mornings feel different this time of the year you can walk outside in the morning and find yourself walking right through a spider web – they can come out of nowhere, seeming to be attached to nothing. So often we get caught in a nostalgic web that is spun from wispy impressions not really attached to anything else, especially other people, and we as the spider capture our own un-manifest potential we did not make room for or allow to fly freely from us, caught mid flight and we feed on our own fear.
The fall equinox is a time when all things are evening out and attempting to come into balance – almost equal parts of day and night depending on where you are in the world, and our internal clocks are following suit, the cool fresh air beckoning us to clear out and freshen up our homes and to let go of things we don’t need any longer giving them a new home and a chance to make someone else happy, simultaneously opening up room for something new to enter in – maybe, one of those dreams stuck in a web of confusion caught in a waiting game of either birth or death – a part of us that we have wrapped up, cocooning it until we become so hungry for what is real and true, that nothing else will do and we begin to feed on the truth that is wrapped up deep within us, and nothing else will satisfy the hunger that comes when we are starving for ourselves.
Traditionally fall has been a time of harvest, and even though most of us do not plant crops, we can share what it is we have gathered in our life, most of us have more then we need or want, drop it off to Goodwill or a shelter, the spirit of fall is very real and so is our need to share, a time for things to come into balance and as you give things away, clear your space and your mind, maybe you will begin to see there is more room for yourself.
~Cynthia
