Otoño

Some things that have been occupying my head space so far this season. Well, it hardly feels like fall here in good ol Austin, where it's summer til' January. It's been in the 80s and 70s so far this "fall," although the leaves are changing color and dropping off the trees, and the sunshine and skies have been beautiful and fair.

1970s Westfalia camper

 

Joshua Tree, 2009

Busking. Photo by Jeremiah Newton

Trilobite tattoo is definitely in my future.

My hero, Carl Sagan.

Eel River

Redwoods.

Tinuviel

The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinuviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.

There Beren came from mountains cold,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled,
He walked alone and sorrowing.
He peered between the hemlock-leaves
And saw in wonder flowers of gold
Upon her mantle and her sleeves,
And her hair like shadow following.

Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.
Through woven woods in Elvenhome
She lightly fled on dancing feet,
And left him lonely still to roam
In the silent forest listening.

He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Or music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-leaves,
And one by one with sighing sound,
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.

He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.

When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again,
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.

Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tinuviel! Tinuviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice lay on her: Beren came,
And doom fell on Tinuviel
That in his arms lay glistening.

As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tinuviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.

Long was the way that fate them bore,
O'er stony mountains cold and grey,
Through halls of iron and darkling door,
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless. 

-J.R.R. Tolkien

Letting Go

This photo about sums up how I'm feeling these days. Wandering naked and barefoot through a forest of tall, silent trees, the sun warm on my skin, the gentle breeze sighing, the damp earth rolling away before me.

Photo by David Winge, 2012

 It's finally cooling down here in Austin, and the shift in seasons has brought with it all manner of beautiful, strange, overwhelming, and transformational changes. It's as if someone has dropped a large stone into the middle of a calm lake, and I am watching the ripples and capillary waves glide and stretch out, becoming farther apart, finally reaching the soft sand at the edge of the shore. Change is sweeping across the land and I struggle to explain it. Things are morphing and evolving here for me, shaping and defining who I've been and who I am, providing me with a clear view of my future. a thousand miles away, in my home state of California, things are also changing exponentially, and the winds of fate have brought news of it to my uncertain ears.

How to put such delicate feelings into words? How to catch a moth and set it free without damaging its wings? I fear I am too blunt, too passionate, too invested. I let things seep into my heart as rainwater into an aquifer, and when the thunderheads all vanish I am left staring at the horizon, an empty blue sky as far as I can see, wondering what happened. Forever will I carry these tiny fragments inside myself. The impressions people have made on me, the places I have been, can never be erased, no matter how desperately I may want some of them to be.

Photo by Joel D'angelo, 2012

What is the strange force within us that oft-resists change? I have always been one to scoff at those who are afraid of anything new or different - those who will never leave the town they grew up in, who are cautious in their work, their social and romantic lives, and their travels, because they are worried that their lives will be altered forever. They resist change because it is often accompanied by pain. They avoid taking risks if there is a possibility of a negative consequence. Since I was young I have striven to eradicate this feeling from my life and embrace the forces of change, but in my darkest and weakest moments I can sense that some ugly miniscule shred of it still exists within me. This is the selfish beast that causes my heart to hurt when I see an old lover, when I hear the music that drove me through the countryside alone in the dead of summer, when I am dropped from someone's life without warning like a leaf from a tree.

"The connections run through both time and space...Time has a different quality in a forest, a different kind of flow. Time moves in circles, and events are linked, even if it's not obvious that they are linked. Events in a forest occur with precision in the flow of tree time, like the motions of an endless dance."
-Richard Preston, The Wild Trees

I'm trying to let the wind and the sea take me, so I can float on gentle currents above a deep blue, rocked to sleep as if in the boughs of a redwood.