Autumn Therapy
(excerpts from a work-in-progress)
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September twenty-second. Autumn arrived a few hours ago, at 2:18 Pacific Standard Time.
of school, remains host to summer's remnant tourists, the last wave of visitors to roll through
this resort town before the beach returns to the locals. The temperature is seventy odd
degrees; the breeze light, caressing. Sitting in my beach chair a hundred feet from the
Pacific, fall is present in an unobtrusive, Southern California way: a sudden brush of cool air
against my face, an aromatic scent, the low slant of the sun against the distant horizon.
Fifty yards out, three surfers ply the waves. I scan the beach, north towards the pier, south
to the distant jetty. I see a few couples, a handful of individuals, walking along the band of
wet sand. Perhaps I'll get a walk in later. For now, I have work to do. This autumn is
different; more precisely, this autumn needs to be different from the dozens of other autumns
preceding it. Up to now, autumn, like the other seasons, has been backdrop. Now it is more
of a context, a workshop and I, at midlife, after two careers, am again an apprentice.
I know this the way a migratory bird edges toward the moment when it senses it must lift off
and set its bearing toward a southern latitude. There is meaning in the gradually cooling
temperatures, the leaves that will flame, die and fall; the rituals around the pacification of
dead spirits at Halloween; the celebratory harvest festivals; the feast at Thanksgiving.
In spring I looked forward to renewal, to the green sprigs of anticipation as the weather
warmed. Plans formed, arising spontaneously from the air it seemed. I will hike Yosemite,
sail the Caribbean, visit Stonehenge, walk the streets of Paris again. Summer brought
recreation, the opportunity to re-create my awareness, my consciousness, based on fresh
experiences, new adventures. Now, with the arrival of autumn, a different engagement
presents itself; definitely not a vacation. Closer to a passage.
Autumn is a time of repair, of unfinished business, of mending. Autumn is a reminder that
the light is closing down, the days are growing shorter; it is time to take up the broken pieces,
to initiate restoration - of abandoned dreams, neglected gifts, wasted talents, stalled
relationships.
Autumn is a memory, a reflection, a regret. It is the dream of working for myself that I didn't
have the knowledge, discipline or persistence to realize. Autumn is the thirty odd feet of
dance floor I chose not to cross because I feared giving the dark-eyed girl I longed to meet
the power to break my heart. It is the novel I abandoned when the initial burst of fearless
creativity wore off; the painting I threw in the garbage in a fit of despair at my lack of skill; the
stony silence in a relationship that once held laughter and companionship.
I consider this as I sit in my beach chair in these first few minutes of fall. What is my
unfinished business, my abandoned tasks, the nagging repairs I've put off for years, the hard
truths I've traded for the softer path of unconscious busyness?
A certain calling beckons on this first day of Autumn, a faint echo emanating from the rafters
in the attic where I store that which no longer interests me or, in this case, that which has
proven too difficult to safely contain.
It is time, I suspect, to bring the box down and open it up.
© Copyright 2009-2010 by Tom Mark Gilbert. All Rights Reserved.
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