Autumn Therapy
September twenty-second. Autumn arrived a few hours ago, at 2:18 pm Pacific Standard Time. Carlsbad Beach, if not as crowded as it was three weeks earlier before the commencement 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 with 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 the 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 the 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.