Sunday 17 September 2000

Pic of the day:

Scattered leaves

It is fairly easy to photograph spring. There is that light green glow in every leaf, its freshness seems to jump into the camera nearly as easily as it jumps into our eyes. It's also not too hard to photograph late fall, with its myriad colors in yellow, orange, red and brown. And winter in its stark black and white. But September ... to catch September is not easy.

There is this tiredness in the forest, that is hard to catch in picture or in words. The hint of brown in the green canopy of leaves, that you will not make out unless you look for it. And even those leaves that are still green, are often nibbled by one insect or another during the long summer. There is hardly anything whole and unhurt, fresh and fully healthy. A beetle is dragging its legs across the ground, as if it may stop for the last time any moment now. Only the spider is patiently waiting, its web too subtle for light to catch on this gray-skied humid day.

Then I look down, at the few scattered leaves that have already made the great leap. And the path is clear. The words echo in my head, over and over again. Scattered leaves - scattered lives.

***

If your life is a leaf
that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love
that is graceful and green as a stem.

Leonard Cohen: Sisters of Mercy.

Ah, but the Sisters of Mercy are departed and gone. Sorry, old man Leonard, but that's how it goes. (And everybody knows.)

***

Is it no longer than last year that I likened my life to August, and now it's the middle of September? I can't say I like this development ... the speed of this development.

The trees don't worry, of course. It is par for the course, for them. Most of them have been there before. Every summer small things nibble their leaves. Every fall they start to grow tired, so tired of keeping it all up. Once they may have wished for spring to just go on and go on, but times they change. The web of illusion start to wear thin and patchy. Bit by bit, the hints are dropped. One leaf here, one leaf there. Bit by bit, the heavens above become visible as the weave of greed is unravelled and the light is allowed to shine through unhindered. One by one the miniscule pieces of clothings are dropped, and the trees get naked for the great sleep.

They've been there before. Every year they fall apart, losing everything. And every spring they wake up, getting it all back and more, all for free. But I do not have their faith.

I wish it would be July forever. I wish it would be 1998 again. I wish my best friend was looking sleepily across the breakfast table, stray hairs all over her face, and we would think we would live forever.

So pick up my scattered leaves, and paint them glorious green. Bring out the super-glue, that they may never fall off again. I will have it all back. I will return to yesterday and close the door.

***

But then it happens again. When the emptyness becomes so empty as to become a vaccuum, something is drawn in. The hairs on my body stand up, even though the room is hot. There is something or someone there, a shadow by my side - or is it a light? I cannot say. I wish I knew, but it retreats whenever I am strong enough to try to analyse it. Yet when I am empty, something is filling me; and when I'm all alone, there is someone with me.

I wish I knew. I wish I knew if it will be there when the winter comes.