Firsts

Firsts

The first day of autumn--a faint chill and pelting rain; the trees taking on different colors, the ferns rusting away.  One day we wake up and it is spring, another winter; for we call the first of things pure: the first taste, the first scent; but the first expression of autumn, the first realization that our earth is moving farther away from the sun, in that thought alone is the greatest solitude.

Daily life has a great warming effect to it; it is wonderful to be caught up in our habits and see from within the season changing.  Haste, anxiety, and dread, all take on new meanings, those which we can recede into and find relief in the fact that our own storms and our own frailties are matters less eternal than the wind.  It is even soothing to rediscover a pressing need and find that the importance given to it was but an illusion caused by the summer months or the full moon.  The way we see a certain look, the way we take someone's word, all are open to the many interpretations among which any one of them may please us, and we stand to it with a conviction of iron.  It is good to have opinions, but when the seasons change and the snowflakes fall, let them travel into that furthest solitude and then we shall see what comes back to us.

 Douglas Thornton