It's a crisp day with the soft dimmed sunlight of mid fall. Breaking the seasons down into early, middle and late is part of the haiku tradition.Things that disgust me in mid fall:
a snail that has been stepped on
a disposable diaper that oozes gel onto a rain-filled gutter
receiving the news that UBC farm will likely lose two of my favourite gardens
hearing the election results
I am busy. I am making art and giving workshops. I am overwhelmed at how much activism needs to happen to save the things that matter. I am embarrassed to be in a city where women in the arts community are afraid to call themselves feminists. So much work to be done. Another Conservative minority voted in and the losers left beating their chests and blaming everyone else. What ever happened to the spirit of gentility, congeniality, honor, humility and graceful pride? What happened to integrity and soul?
Mid fall is the place in between the transitions from summer to fall and fall to winter. We need to ritualize the transitions between transitions. Fall is in limbo, and yet fall is falling all around us as acorns, leaves and horse chestnuts drop onto sidewalks. My father will have an operation tomorrow. I know it will be hard. It will age him. If only we had the power to slow those changes down--to stop mid-fall, as it were, and linger there. Transitions must happen, and so we ritualize them, fetishize them, or try to ignore them, but we can't stop them mid-fall. We try to suspend time, stretch it out, but it pulls us and transforms us into a being that has experienced yet another season on this earth. The falling leaf may catch in a spider's web, but it is still slowly decaying, breaking down with that snail and that diaper and becoming one with the earth, for better or worse.
Mid fall is philosophical. We are between waking and sleeping. A spider is dreaming it is a leaf dreaming it is a spider and so on and so on. Borders dissolve in the rain. Transitions open us up to new forms of being. What will you be mid fall?
1 comment:
Lovely photos, lovely writing. I think the state of feminism is in transition. I think it's gonna make a comeback. I have taught many young women who shout their feminism from the rooftops, from the internet, from their activism. It's a cycle, like the seasons.
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