Wabi-Sabi Autumn

Wabi-Sabi Autumn

Inspired by Whispered Images: Photographs in the Aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi, by Eric Somers, http://www.sandbookstudio.com/photo.html

I notice, this October, skittering shadows

of the brittle leaves that drop from

sycamores in autumn, and I wonder if

the trees shed now-unnecessary foliage

to make compost while they sleep –

protection through the winter,

nourishment in spring for them and their

companions and dependents, birds and

bugs and shrubbery that needs their

shade.

There is along my path an ailing maple,

all except a few limbs bare, but those in

crimson glory, unaware (or, if they

know, not caring) that their brother-

sister branches lack the wherewithal to

bud, the sap too sluggish (or it might be

absent altogether) to remind the naked

branches of their foliating habit when

the air warms and the earth unhardens.

Once I would have grieved or fretted:

What atrocity, what human meddling,

has been visited upon this innocently

thriving urban flora specimen? Today, in

mid-October, I rejoice at the

phenomenon – nature acting naturally

regardless of the stimulus.

Not so long ago I dreaded winter – a

colossal inconvenience and a fearsome

obstacle to my frenetic busyness, to my

insistence that I float from here to there

on friendly breezes, not get bitten by a

north wind that must certainly be vicious

or at least dispassionate to

(unprovoked!) attack a lone pedestrian.

Indeed I took it personally and let it

hinder my activity, when all I really

needed was another sweater and a hat

or else, perhaps, a day of rest and

meditation and of making soup from

scraps of chicken and the half a spinach

salad loosely wrapped in cellophane 

and almost past its fresh-till date.

The grass is showing weariness, and who

can blame it, being hacked and raked

and sprayed at rigid intervals all

summer? But it doesn’t strive, it just

adapts, accepting change according to its

habit. After all, the sun has not retired; it

is only at a greater distance from the

planet than in April, say, or August. It

comes back, requiring none of my

assistance. If I fancy there’s a cosmic

knowing nature has that dormancy is

preparation, I can rest contentedly in

what I sense as temporary, as a time of

restoration, not the end of summers, not

the death of light.