MISHMASHING

     When I grow bored with being organized and efficient, I sometimes settle cheerfully into the coolness and poise of disorganization. Then, I accept my disorders and mishmashes as no worse than the way leaves lie across lawns in graceful confusion these days. I compare myself to clouds in the sky as they scatter and shift and reshuffle themselves in their beautifully messy way. Being neat is a nice way to live, but here’s a cheer, too, for occasional clutter and even some harmless chaos. I see little orderliness on the beaches we walk, with their picturesque swirls of sand and driftwood and stones, and sometimes I let my life be like that, let the waves wash in and shape my minutes every which way. 

GLORY

“Glory be to God” is a phrase I often heard growing up, but this morning I’m thinking about glory be to bright autumn leaves, and glory be to blue skies, and glory be to a good cup of coffee. I don’t attend church, but I do worship the wonders of this world. I praise the  power of a few flowers to stay strong on frosty mornings, and I praise the power of my hands that help me write these words. I give homage to the holy eggs from Farmer Brown which will soon sizzle on the stove, and I give kudos to cranberry jam and the juice of green grapes. I say glory be to the greatness of this moment, and to the majesty of our small house in Mystic, and to the magnificence of the sparrow on our feeder just now.  

MOONS AND PARAGRAPHS

"Blue Moon Sail", oil,
by Thaw Malin III

An almost full moon is shining through the trees as I type this – as I take my time to try to make a whole, full, and finished paragraph – and its light looks like it might be good luck for my writing. It’s a complete moon, and I want to make a complete piece of writing. I want to place words in a suitable order so there’s an unbroken series of ideas doing their work side by side, in partnership, as one. The moon in this pre-dawn darkness makes a circle of light, and perhaps my paragraph can produce a circle of thoughts – a circle that might, in its own way, shine with the fullness and simplicity of the moon. I think of other things that are full – this earth full of force and promise, the sea full of hopeful life – and I hope my small series of phrases and sentences may be full of its own kind of influential life. Even if I am the only person who will read my paragraph, perhaps it will shine as I say the words silently, shine like something in good shape and strong, the unbroken and undamaged thoughts of one man on a very early moonlit morning.

LAZY DAY

     I know my hard-working, un-retired friends may find this annoying, but I have to say it anyway: I had the laziest of days today. When I was teaching I loved my work, and today I loved my idleness. I was positively work-shy. I lolled, loafed, and loitered through most of the day. I had tons of time on my hands, and I happily killed it all. I was a totally shiftless dude, as though I was riding in a slow-moving, old-fashioned, going-nowhere horse-drawn buggy. I was completely remiss in my duties to the dishes and the dusting rag. I basically bummed around from breakfast on, lollygagging and twiddling my thumbs. I was slack, lax, and lackadaisical – just taking a break after 45 years of teaching. I don’t intend to fritter away all my senior days, but I’m as old as the hills, and today I was pleased to be as idle and undisturbed as the oldest.

     To my un-retired friends: Hang in there. If you’re lucky enough to love your work, you’ll surely love your indolent elderly days.  

LEAVES LETTING GO

"October", oil,
by Linda McCoy

     I wonder if I could conduct myself more often the way the autumn leaves are living in these last days of their lives. To use a familiar phrase, they’re simply “letting go”, setting themselves loose from their limbs and allowing the breezes to bring them where they will. They’re surrendering, in a sense, submitting to the stronger powers of winds and seasons, and in that surrender, I see a kind of lighthearted liberty. I know they’re just leaves, but perhaps people like me could learn from them – learn to allow more than resist, to let go more than grasp and cling. The winds will take the leaves where they need to go, and maybe my days, if I trust them, will deliver me, each evening, to exactly where I’m best prepared to be. Leaves seem to sense when it’s time to float instead of hold tight, a lesson I may be just starting to learn.     

QUIETLY

There’s a restful peace in his days.

To him, this planet seems to swirl

through space in slow motion.

Rainstorms wash the trees with patience,

and school buses bring the kids

safely to the doors without haste.

Even the shift in his Civic

slides back and forth beneath his fingers

in a leisurely manner,

and the sentences in books he reads

pass into his mind

like cows coming quietly to the barn.

DRIVING TO BOSTON

With serenity sitting beside him,
something quiet comes to him – 
the softness of his thoughts, 
the gentleness of his heartbeats,
the healthy look of the whole sky.
Even her driving seems silent,
as though she’s simply a breeze
bringing them in their car
to an undisturbed place in Boston,
the place where they first held hands,
a place with silence
under and all around it.

ELEGANT DEATHS

“When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in.”

-- Henry David Thoreau, “Autumn Tints”

  No one sheds a tear as the colorful leaves of fall

flutter to the ground, and yet death is doing its busiest work with these old leaves. The vivid leaves that are falling to our lawns have all died, and yet there are no cries of sorrow among us, no sounds of grief and bereavement. In fact, autumn is more often a time of celebration, a time when kids kick up leaves with laughter and cider is shared around tables with gusto. It’s strange that the serene and silent death of these countless leaves usually leaves us appreciative rather than sad, satisfied rather than sorrowful. Perhaps it’s because the leaves die in such peace, and with such gracefulness. They don’t fight their fall and their end, but seem to float with it in a kind of relaxed reverie, as if they know their deaths will result in the rise of fresh new life in the spring.

When my time comes, I hope I can meet it with as much poise and deportment as our Mystic autumn leaves.     

A LOVING RAMBLE

        Lately I’ve noticed leaves falling from trees in an undisturbed and slow-moving manner, just one every few seconds, sidling slowly down in their own sweet time. We haven’t yet reached the days when there’s a daily downpour of leaves, and so we have these single leaves that seem to linger in the air as they waft their way here and there above the lawns and streets. Watching them for a few minutes this morning, I thought of some people I’ve known who seemed able to live like these leaves, sort of floating effortlessly with the updrafts and downdrafts of life. They seemed to instinctively know that nothing is gained by grappling with life, and that a good way to live is to let life lead the way in its outstandingly whimsical manner. They worked hard, yes, and they reliably did their duties, but I always saw a smoothness in their actions, almost as though they were amusing themselves rather than working. Like the solitary leaves that glide above us with ease in these early autumn days, these friends from my past made living look like a loving ramble rather than a demanding ordeal.     

RAKING AND WRITING

"Virginia Autumn Leaves",
oil, by Kevin Inman

I still like rounding up fallen leaves the old-fashioned way, with a rake, mostly because it’s a soft and hushing kind of activity, much like writing sometimes is for me – as I hope it sometimes was for my students. In forthcoming days, I’m sure I will enjoy the silence of the yard as I sweep the rake back and forth, finding a strange kind of serenity with the easy strokes. As the leaves let themselves be brought together in piles, so will my feelings seem to fall into their proper and peaceful places inside me. The noise of stressful thoughts will subside into softness very much like the sounds made by my moving rake. I try to write a paragraph each day, and I often find a similar smoothness in the process of setting words and sentences down in a disciplined fashion. There’s sometimes a sense of almost flawless synchronization in the writing, as if the words can do nothing else but be just where they are on the page. For me, a dismal day can become as soft as piles of leaves once a paragraph’s words are put down. Was it ever the same with my students? Perhaps not often, but I do hope they occasionally felt the fullness of peace that placing words carefully together can bring. Perhaps, in the privacy of their rooms at home, they sometimes saw their words meet together on the computer screen as easily and softly as leaves will be assembling on lawns in the coming weeks.