Alive in Autumn

I cannot recall falling in love with autumn. It’s a love that precedes memory, perhaps it’s a love without beginning.

Autumn reminds me that I am alive. I am warm and filled with warm blood, under warm skin, with warm desires. My warmth spills with colors that radiate life like quaking aspens, garden gourds, and ground nutmeg. I’m too warm for sunshine. I generate my own heat and require very little from the sun. In autumn, days descend discreetly and nights linger longer. My warmth has room to breathe during autumn’s alchemy.

Autumn is where the unusual and ugly become lively and lovely. We cackle in the dark as we play with fear. We make the horrifying hilarious and the dreadful delightful. We laugh at what’s grim while holding our dead in reverence. We make death small by living abundantly.

Autumn is where transition is praised for its beauty. Rare hues of marigold, paprika, rust, amber, persimmon, and umber become markers of a seasonal metamorphosis. Autumn coaxes our becoming. She reminds us that nothing is permanent, including you. As quickly as she arrives, she will withdraw wistfully.

Though autumn is in motion, she is quiet, still, and private. She invites you to relish the present moment as magical—to savor life, savor the harvest, savor loved ones. She invites you to savor particularly—savor deliberately, savor slowly, savor deeply, savor intimately.

Autumn was never going to be winter. She was far too warm. She was never going to be spring. She was far too dark. She was never going to be summer. She was far too reserved. Autumn is simply autumn. She doesn’t need to be anything other than what she is to be exquisite.