Fall Ruminations

Fall has a way of making me think too much - about myself, about my work, about silly things and serious things alike. Today there are many, many thoughts percolating in my head and I'm struggling to put them all into words and onto paper. I've been thinking a lot about decay this Fall and trying to square the end of the year and the coming of cold weather and dead leaves with my growing need to be positive, warm, and happy.It's always too easy to get caught up in the idea that Fall means everything decaying, drying up, dying. I had a thought the other day, though, that maybe Fall isn't completely about things coming to an end. Maybe, just maybe, Fall is just an instance of potential energy. Yes, things fall off and begin to crumble in these first colder months, but part of the shriveling dessication also exposes seeds. So many of the things that appear and litter the ground in fall are berries, nuts, seed pods - things that spend the winter burrowing and being pressed into the ground, freezing, and eventually thawing to bud and sprout and bloom. All of this decay and dropping off is necessary, then, and is actually as much a sign of fertility and regeneration and progress as any flower in Spring.
I'm hoping this Fall and Winter can be something like that for me. I've got a lot of energy that's spinning off in unproductive directions and a lot of creativity that is pooling, unused, and beginning to fester. Hopefully I can start shedding some of my post-Summer malaise and something will find its way into the ground and by Spring, something will have taken root. No, I'm not going into hibernation, but hopefully some decay will give way to productivity.

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In other news, I went to Maine with my family yesterday. It's always such a soul-warming place to go. I love driving around in the woods and suddenly peeking through to see the ocean and decrescendos of rock giving way to waves and blue water. Here are a few first photos - many more yet to come as the result of a little film and new-lens experimentation.(And yes, I'm well aware of the fact that everyone's pictures of fall foliage and ocean horizons look exactly the same, but there was something about yesterday that made photos I just can't get enough of. Feel free to not look, but I think they're awfully pretty.)