Thursday, October 1, 2009

Suddenly, It Is Fall


It's October the First and it's chilly here in North Florida. I had to put on a pair of socks this morning. It's not unusual to get these cool mornings in early fall but it's always a bit of a shock to the system after an entire summer of sweat and mosquitoes and poison ivy and itching and did I mention sweat?

The chickens tuck themselves up earlier at night and come out later in the morning. I suppose we'll have to figure out how to get some heat in that hen house when the temperatures really drop. As with everything involving the chickens, we fly by the seat of our pants and figure it out as we go along.

My old dog Pearl is getting skinnier and skinnier. She's about to turn fourteen, which is old for a boxer.


I can't seem to get a good shot of her today. She's deaf and can't listen to instruction. Nor to reason, either, it would seem. She spends half her day pawing at her food bowl to get me to add a few more kibbles, no matter how full it is. When I go insane and just put the bowl away she looks at me so sorrowfully, as if the once again, I have failed to understand her when it is so obvious what she wants. She wanders back into the house and curls up somewhere and takes another nap. We're hoping to have Lily and Jason and Owen and all the children out to the house on Sunday for a celebration of birthdays and birth-days. We plan to let Pearl lick Owen's head which will be a lifetime dream for Pearl. She loves babies with a passion and when one enters the house, she whimpers with joy and the need to get near enough to lick that baby's head.

Once, Miss Maybelle shaved her head and Pearl spent an ecstatic twenty minutes, just licking May's scalp and May, being the sweet thing she is, let her. We are sure that licking Owen's head will be of benefit to both Pearl and the baby. We have no idea why we think this, but we do.

Another plan we have for Pearl's health is to give her a raw deer liver. Once we had an old cat named Bob. Bob had one of the biggest personalities of anyone I've ever met, human, canine, feline, what-have-you. It wasn't a particularly pleasant personality but it was huge. He spent his days patrolling the perimeter of whatever house we lived in, protecting us and our property. When he got old, he got very ill. The vet said it was either Feline AIDS or a stroke or a tumor but whatever it was, the cat was going to die. His eyeball was popping out of his head and he looked like something from Pet Cemetery but before we decided what to do with him Mr. Moon shot a deer and gave the liver to Bob. Bob ate massive quantities of that liver and then he recovered, his eyeball went back into his head and he lived to patrol more perimeters and to express his bitchy opinion about the world in general for quite a few more years.
So Mr. Moon wants to get a deer liver for Pearl to see if that will help her. It's hunting season and my laundry is filled with camo-this and camo-that and I have to use non-scented soap on everything and Mr. Moon gets up way before dawn and goes out into the woods and sits, watching the deer come in and feed and hoping for a good shot which rarely happens.

Here he is, coming in this morning:


I know. You can barely see him because of that camo.

And so it's fall. The pinecone lillies are turning red and the betony is springing up again, taunting me from all the beds where I spent hours last fall, pulling it up by the root, carefully, carefully, trying to get it all. I will never get rid of all the betony and have a great, grudging respect for its tenacity and life force.


The Confederate Rose is blooming, great tissue-paper flowers of pink ruffles, somehow jarring at this time of year.


Really- does that look like a fall flower? Well, to everything there is a season and it is the season for these gaudy confections of blooms. The sasanqua are starting to bloom next door at Ms. Petit Fleur's and all the camellias are full of tight buds which will open when winter is at its weary end. I look forward to that. The camellias are my favorites and I have planted quite a few here and finally, after five long years, they are really starting to grow.

The sky is that deep blue of fall, the light is that sharp crisp cut of beams shafting its way through the trees and making the tops of the oaks look like perhaps heaven is slowly moving downward towards earth. It is fall.

And I am feeling a bit melancholy today, even with all of this beauty, even with my grandson eighteen miles down the road. I think back to one week ago today and it is impossible to think that Lily and Hank and I ate lunch and then went to Goodwill and had silly times, Lily about to start her journey to bring us Owen. Impossible. One week? No way.

It was Lis's grandson's second birthday yesterday and as she said, "Well, that took about fifteen minutes," when we were talking about how quickly that time has flown.

The seasons change and everything else does too but instead of the slow, dignified turns the earth used to take around the sun, now it seems as if it is all a mad whirling. I lie in bed in the morning and wish to go back to sleep to make it all slow down. But of course, it won't. I get up and drink my coffee and the Confederate Rose blooms and my grandson is five days old and I will go to see him today because I can't wait many more moments. Pearl gets skinnier and Mr. Moon and I get grayer and I suppose I am melancholy because it is all so beautiful and I can't make it slow down. I can't hold it in my hand long enough to study down into the molecules of joy that it all presents because it is whirling, it is hurtling, it is changing even as I look at it all, even as I close my eyes to take it all in with my heart, even as I cry at the beauty of it, the glory of it, the swift transcendence of it all.

And isn't that the human condition? To weep at what we have because it will not last?

Or perhaps it is just me.

Be here now, that crazy Ram Dass said and if he said nothing else, that would be enough. I try. I try to be here now but maybe, like Emily in Our Town, I can't because it's too beautiful to bear. I feel like my chest is split wide open. I think of Eliot with his patient etherized upon a table and I think of Frida Kahlo with her staring eyes and pumping red heart and I think of how I am not strong enough to hold all of this I have right now, I feel it dropping from my hands, my arms, even as I try to keep it close to me, even as I try to open myself to more, even as fall's light so helpfully illuminates what it is I have, covering it all with gold.

24 comments:

  1. I think this one is my favorite yet. I went to see Mr. Owen yesterday and he was fussy but adorable. Mostly, he wanted to nurse and nap on a ninny. Which, who wouldn't?

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  2. I love the cat and camo-stuff. Funny. It IS hard to see Mr Moon in that photo.

    Mourning that which is fleeting IS the human condition, you're not wrong.

    Love to all!

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  3. Maybe you're just coming back down from all the excitement and anticipation around Owen's birth.

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  4. I relate fully to your words this morning. Last night I picked all of the tomatos in our little garden as it's been getting colder and we were starting to weary of covering the tender green tomatos.

    I had my dear girl take a picture of my hands green with tomato vine sap, next to the bowls and boxes of tomatos, and I was SO FILLED with joy at the beauty and fragrance of even the green fruit that tears were pouring from my eyes. I tapped my chest, tried to tell her through the tears how full my heart was.

    And this morning my sweet one made me my all time favorite breakfast, yes you know what it was, fried green tomatos, of which nothing ON EARTH tastes and feels so divine to the teeth and tongue.

    Love,
    Mary

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  5. "Everything is temporary, that don't excuse nothing!" Moonstruck.

    I don't know why, I just wanted to say that... plus, anything to do with that movie reminds me of Sue, so there you go.

    xoxo
    pf

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  6. I think that I do not mourn the beauty of the present because I'm so certain - in all my arrogance - that yet more beauty is yet to come.

    I have great, great hope for the deer liver. And the licking of the head.

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  7. DTG- That's his job- nurse and nap. On the ninny. Lucky boy.

    Ms. Jo- Yes, I covered some ground on that one. Possibly too much.

    Stephanie- After-Birth pangs.

    Mary- Ah, we are related by more than name. My tomatoes are so long gone and I can only look forward to next year for that best of meals.

    Ms. Fleur- Very fitting indeed.

    Nola- I wish I were more like that. Yes, we are hoping for healing for Pearl. Or at least some enormous temporary happiness.

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  8. Why Ms. Moon, you've gone and filled my eyes with tears again this morning, as you put to words the feelings in my heart and the thoughts in my head. I feel as articulate as a clod of dirt right now, with fall nipping at my heels and time spinning faster than I can stand, and my heart and head just full to the brim. And I come to your blog and feel like you speak for me, and I'm grateful I found your page, I truly am.

    I've become a photo taking nut, I think to try and preserve all that will not last, and my screensaver reminds me on the darkest coldest days that spring is coming, it always does.

    I hope that deer liver does the trick.

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  9. I know exactly what you mean, and I think you know what I mean when I say that sometimes when I'm holding the kids or they're running to me or we're watching TV while they bury their hands in my hair - I already miss them. Because I know it's SO fleeting. It makes me sad right there in the happy. It's hard to live in the present sometimes for me too, when you feel things so deeply.

    I think alot of writers are this way, and it's why we feel the need to document everything so we can look at it again and again and remind ourselves of the sweetness.

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  10. It is increasingly clear to me, I have found a familiar, Ms. Moon. The fall, oh the fall, I hate it so. But I fight it and hold on to every inch of summer left. Because after fall comes winter and then. Well, I am one of those. I don't want to go there yet, not even in my mind.

    I found your link to the May post last night. I had to keep clicking off. Then I went back. Then I would click off. To think about it all. Because even though I did not have precisely your situation, I finally found someone who feels like I do about the space thing. I'll wait to write certain blog posts, for instance, until all is quiet, the guys are gone, or asleep, deep in the night when I should be asleep too. I treasure that time, it is MINE.

    Growing up, I had the woods. I could bolt out the back door and no one could find me. My father, a hunter, could, maybe. And if I got off into the swamp it was 50-50. I don't have a woods here, figuratively or literally, and I think that's why I get so rabid about the bits of time I get that purely are mine.

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  11. I think I need a deer liver also, doctor gave me a concerned "oh" yesterday and packed me off for tests. I'm sure it's nothing, but the liver sounds good.
    And even though I've just shaved my head, I'm not lettin' anyone/thing lick it for under $40.

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  12. That is my human condition, too. And I wish I could be more like Nola as well, because that would be just spiffing. I sometimes hate that most beautiful moments get spoilt by that sadness about everything passing.

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  13. Whew! I'll read this post over and over and still marvel. And way to get the heart beating and be filled with life and love and only a tiny bit of frenzy but who's to say that frenzy isn't in order, some of the time. I love you, Ms. Moon.

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  14. You knowwhat? I have aboslutely nothing to contribute today. Happy hunting to Mr. Moon, happy headlicking to Pearl.

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  15. So how cold does it actually get where you are?

    We've been dropping down to the 40's at night here. I think we're in for a long, cool winter.

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  16. Where's Mr. Moon? I can't find him in any photos, even though you mentioned he was there.

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  17. I read this and I enjoyed it and identified with it and I have a million of the wrong things to say so, I'll just say "Hi!" and "Thank you!"

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  18. Mel- My blog has given me the freedom to take pictures too, which I never thought I'd want to. But picture books are always fun and it's lovely to be able to say- see, this is what a pine cone lily looks like. We have big hopes for the deer liver.

    SJ- We get to experience everything twice.

    Magnum- It DAMN well better be nothing. And maybe you should come let Pearl lick your head. It surely couldn't hurt and I think it feels good.

    Mwa- We are always waiting for the other shoe to drop, which is a sad way to live.

    Elizabeth- Maybe frenzy is like the carbonation in fizzy water. The bubbles make it alive. I don't know. I love you, too.

    Kori- And that is plenty and enough.

    Marsha- Down in the low fifties the last few nights. Cold enough for us.

    Nicol- Tee-hee.

    Ms. Trouble- There are never any wrong things to say here. Not from you.

    Glimmer- As a child, I had the woods too. And the river. It was beautiful and those hours spent lying under a tree or beside a river have allowed me to be who I am. Thank-you.

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  19. What a lovely post. And how it makes me yearn to be there.

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  20. We are in the Thoreau club then, I guess. Requiring what he called "the tonic of wilderness."

    I'm fascinated by the liver thing. It makes me think the deer had eaten a bunch of Ormus-packed food in the wild. Ormus being mysterious, supposedly miraculous at times, everywhere and being studied but people still don't really know what it is.

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  21. Let's hope Mr Moon gets that deer soon.... hopefully Pearl will benefit from all that goodness x

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  22. Aunt Becky- Ah. But today is cloudy and gray and not as cool and crisp. Ups and downs.

    Glimmer- Mr. Moon just asked me this morning if people who read my blog ever say anything like, "What?! Mr. Moon shoots deer?" And I told him that no, they never do. They may think it, but they don't say it. So when you wrote this comment, I shared it with him. I think he was mystified but I know he knows what you're talking about.

    Ms. Lilac- I am sure she will.

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  23. Ms. Moon,
    This post is sublime. Like Hank, it may be my favorite. Just gorgeous. You always manage to capture so beautifully in words what I feel in my heart, but am too impatient and untalented to express.

    I love you SO MUCH, and I hope to hell Pearl makes it and gets better because I am in love with her, and I want to meet her personally.

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  24. You know what, Ms. Bastard? That is one of my favorites too. And it just came to me like a gift, like the gifts I was writing about.
    Mr. Moon will get this dog a deer liver and she will live to meet you. I'm counting on it.
    Love you so much, too.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.