fleeting, part 2.

Today is the first day of Autumn.  It is the season of ending, when we reap the harvest, admire the last blaze of summer's foliage, and think about the long hibernation of winter.  

For people in other climates, this is alternately the season of birth, and so I find it fitting that today I am given the ending to Jack and I.  The end was inevitable, but the story which is the ending was always missing.   Today, though, Jack and I came back to the city from a productive-yet-relaxing weekend in the country (I earned enough money to pay rent, went squirrel hunting, and saw my family) and learned that Alaina and Jack would be off to Sydney, Australia.  This is a great moment, and, like all great things, carries a certain amount of sadness with the joy.  To top it off, I type this in my apartment while listening to Peter Gabriel's Salisbury Hill.

A week ago, I wrote a poem about the Fall season:

Autumn has come to the midwest

on the fading brilliance 

of Summer's coattails

Gilding the emerald mosaic

Ushering the harvest.

It is the season

of the hunt

of the rut

of slaughter

the life giving end of life.

Soon the snow will come

vertical strands of wood-smoke

bare trees 

stubble fields

joining the low, gray sky.

The aroma of Earth and dried leaves

quicken my heart

sharpen my senses:

I long for the November wood

the rush of prey.

So, now, we have and ending.  It is the work of the same authors which send me to Africa, and to the challenges of an interesting life.  The dewey-eyed youth will be off to join the World with new found skills, yet unprepared for what will come.  Still: the adventure of what will happen is more than anyone can imagine.  Our dreams are ill-equipped to contend with the joy of true adventure.  Even I could not begin to see a future of such grander. And such is life:

For those who would live life, to {as is written) not find, when they come to die, that they had not truly lived, but instead to have savored all the flavors of our mortal gift: that sorrow had been drunk as deeply as love; suffering with joy; salvation mingled with the sweet wine of the damned.  It is the human condition to walk the edges of razors and to see -should we be aware, vigilant and true- the grandiose scene of creation but for a moment.  And, what is more, to share all that we have been with our friends.  

Jack and I have adventures left, and stories untold, but tonight I raise a glass to Alaina for her courage to pursue the most elusive of prey: her dreams.