Renewal & Redemption

Today is just an amazingly beautiful day and with the low this morning at 47 degrees, it is obvious we are now on a solid Autumn Trajectory. And I for one couldn't be happier about that for I am a tried and true Lover of the Season:  A True FALL GUY.

I love Autumn with it's crisp cool leaf-smoke tinged air...it's majestic "Fall Sky"...big billowy clouds and deep dark blue palette. The leaves changing color and the subtle hint that Winter, Mean Old Man that he is...is on the way.

I have always been somewhat f``inated with the concept of Fall that everything DIES...so it can begin again...Renewal. The concept of renewal is one that most of us are OK with because we would all like a chance perhaps to start again...knowing what we KNOW, of course! 

I've posted this several times before but it is simply one of my favorite poems...shoot it's one of my favorite written works period. "Late October" by Maya Angelo is an excellent example of this concept of renewal...of beginning again.

LATE OCTOBER

Carefully
the leaves of autumn
sprinkle down the tinny
sound of little dyings
and skies sated
of ruddy sunsets
of roseate dawns
roil ceaselessly in 
cobweb greys and turn
to black 
for comfort.

Only Lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed.

That pretty much illustrates the point I am trying to make. That poem was on the back cover of the program at my wedding to Marcia. It has always been a profoundly important piece of art and philosophy in my world and that continues that way today.

So when I headed out this morning at 5:15 and the air burned with the cool crispness of newly chilled air on summer-sun-tanned skin FALL was the first thing that came to my mind (other then the fact that I was FREAKING COLD!!)

I can look back at various points in my life now and tell that in their own way they were times of renewal...an Autumn for the Soul as it were and critically important periods of renewal at that... particularly after I found recovery. 

I now understand the value of a "step-back" in one's daily life...a time to pause, to ponder and re-evaluate on the fly how I am feeling and whats going on. This has proven invaluable to me because it helps to keep things in perspective...and that is so critical to seeking happiness and serenity on the road to recovery.