Yellow Leaves Are Dying

There is a tree outside my window, reaching and twisting outward like a sentinel of the sky.  It's branches bow humbly in the autumn wind as melancholy clouds fight a battle of mourning with the sun.  The air is impregnated with winter, heavy with chill like a bough laden with snow, casting grey shadows amongst grey light.  The world is blanketed in the cold, drizzling consequences of this spinning, hurtling world.
And yet this tree outside my window is exploding, the torch of nature has set alight its leaves and they burn an ecstatic yellow.  The wind, in sweeping torrents of impish playfulness, scatters the flame.  The leaves cover the ground, collecting in forgotten concrete corners and transforming the mundane sidewalk into a dance of exquisite ferocity, a duet of gust and color.  The leaves stick to the shoes of passersby in drab raincoats and black umbrellas, for brief moments letting them walk in the midst of swirling yellow and rain.
It is a beautiful gift, this tree, as leaves detach like scattered pigeons and ascend and descend upon the fancies of the icy breeze, filling the atmosphere and carpeting the earth with a kingly array.  And yet, of course, comes of the great fact of autumn, the great metaphor as it were.
Everything is dying.
And even as the wind and the tree laugh, the wind snatches away those ecstatic yellow leaves and once they depart they do not return, and the tree is naked for a season.  A shade of yellow like this will never be seen again, once it is blown it is blown.  Soon there will be no more joyful, trumpet-like color to dance around the faded world.
I feel a resonance with this tree.  It gives such a fleeting beauty to the world, shedding its skin to cover and tend a brief area of this enormously brutal world, as I attempt to shed my soul to try and sway the apathetic darkness that closes in around me.  I am synonymous with this tree, as perhaps we all are.  Whether through words, or actions, small gestures or large shouts, we are all trying to spread ourselves throughout the world.  And most, like this tree, are shedding their fantastical souls of yellow and gold to simply try and set the world ablaze again with dance.
But are we, like this tree, dying?
Yes, we are.
And we will never get our old sense of beauty back.  Like this tree, once the leaves are gone they are gone forever, scattered and shriveled.  The winter comes and blankets the tree's gentle nakedness in snow, but the beauty the tree itself produced has been quelled.
But then comes the buds of spring, the sun-streaked summer, and again scattering of beauty.  It is the cycle of nature that we've all know since childhood.
If you are clutching at parts yourself that are fading, that are dying and scattering themselves, if you feel like you're pouring yourself into the world and soon you will be empty, let it all go.  It was always meant to go.  It is the seasons of the soul.  Empty yourself and you may be barren for a time, with only cold bleak pessimism to cover yourself with, but it will not last.  Just as there are parts of you that are not meant to last, so bleakness will not last, but just as things will always grow anew, so the winter will always come again.  But there is beauty in the winter, too.
The yellow leaves are dying, but the tree is not.  Not yet.  And it still has so much more ecstasy to give, with golden leaves to come.
It's okay to let parts of you die, to give irreplaceable to beauty the world, to a friend, to a stranger.  The world is a cycle.  The soul is a cycle.  It's all an intricate, swirling, incomprehensible and gorgeous cycle.
The leaves fall, they give, they die, and new leaves will burst forth with a remembrance of what has fallen to give them life.
Because nature's first green is gold.                          

Journaling Month ~ Week 4 ~ End

~Here's an explanation of Journaling Month, Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3~

Monday-
A Letter to Troubled Artists
Maybe this isn't your time to create.  Maybe this isn't your time to find meaning.  Maybe this isn't your time to change the world and burn with brilliance.
Maybe this is your time to lay awake at night, listening to your heartbeat until 3am and watching the outlines of shadows you cannot understand move gently across your wall.  Maybe this is your time to sweep your hand across the sky and feel the loneliness there, to put your eyes up against the stars and wonder how infinite infinity really is.
Place your fingers against the piano keys and realize that it is you who plays the music.  That these actions, this observation of black and white keys produce the indescribable beauty of a song.  You have your instrument, you have your talent, and you have it all beneath your fingers.
Maybe this isn't your time to scatter your notes like seed among pigeons, maybe this isn't your time to stir up wings in to flight.  Maybe this isn't your time to understand.
But it is your chance to observe, to breath in the struggles and contradictions and hardships of the world so that you may exhale them as ecstatic beauty when it all comes rushing out in a gasp, a sob that you have been keeping inside you for this moment.
Your time will come.

Tuesday-
A Letter to Thinkers    
We are curious creatures, here.  The infinity of the universe stretches out before us and the infinity of existence stretches inside us and our tired eyes cannot discern between them.  But we try, stubbornly searching the horizon to try and find the line that separates the ocean of ourselves from the vast, confounding sky.  We ask the sun what it sees, bringing light to all things, we ask the moon what tears it cries, struggling gently against the blue, and we wonder if the stars are really anything more than pinpricks.
Some people, most people, don't understand when I reach up and try to touch things that cannot be proven.  They tell me to focus on the vast archaic explosions behind the stars, to stop dwelling on the constellations but my mind floats upward, it tries to fog up the mirrors that sparkle like gentle illusions above me.  "Don't you want to see your reflection?" I have been asked.  And I can only reply, "I do."
We do not know if anything is really beyond the sky.  We have never reached the bottom of the ocean.  We do not know what we really look like, inside the consciousness that stretches out from all of us like Subway systems across the universe.
But we have our thoughts, we have our questions and we have the ability to find answers.  We have a journey to embark upon.
A journey of reflection.  

Wednesday-
A Letter to the Weary
I am so unsure.
I am so unsure of the earth beneath my feet, of the life that spills from the cracks in my mind, and the tired workings of the two souls that mesh together like clockwork.  Sometimes I feel the rhythm of the world beneath my eyelids, and I know my organic heart is not of this world.  And sometimes I listen to the radio and the noises scatter in shapes that remind me of you, and I am alone.  But I think your ear is pressed against the other side of the music.
I am so unsure.

Thursday-
A Letter to Music
You are always there, laying close to me when I need to be alone, whispering answers like melodies and questions like verse.  You spread yourself out against the souls of so many, a testament to ideas.  I wish more than anything to see the world through your eyes, and by that, to see the world through everyone's eyes -- a different vantage from every note, a different pair of eyes for every word.  I will put on the spectacles of melodies, to see the earth through impossible collections of symphonic creations.  Will you take me gently in your arms?  Take me above this simple corporal body, to a well-worn place.  The rugged patterns fit my rugged tears.
Oh, music, the places I have been with you.  The things I've left behind in you.  The worlds I have created in you.  The light, like the ashes, you have scattered inside me.
I can only stand in gratefulness. 

Firday-
A Letter to the Lonely
There is a hole in the world.  People think it is theirs, their personal and empty burden.  They claim it is their invention, their creation, their original and unimaginable pain.
But it is collective.  It is a common human suffering, and the edges of that hole extend over all our souls.
All.
It is a rope, winding around the feet of humanity.  It makes us stumble but it connects us.  Like veins the gaps in our minds, our feelings, our earth, supply us with the blood we need to be human.
There is a hole in the world.  Peer down into it, over yourself and into the void that is sliding gently down in to Meaning.
I am so terrified of that hole.  We all are.  I think it is swallowing me, and I cannot tell if it is making me or unraveling me.  It is in my heart, and yours.  Growing.
Growing, growing.
Perhaps, when we say our hearts are breaking, we merely mean the pain of the ever-growing hole has become almost unbearable.  Or maybe the hole, that monstrous hole is what breaks our hot heartbeats.
There is a hole in the world, and it binds us all togther, one way or another.  It eclipses our souls, it leaks through our eyes, it connects us.
There is a hole in the world.
It is called Love.      

 Saturday-
A Letter to the World
City stagelights.  A play in three acts, a curtain call, but no intermission.  The stranger that sits next to you, and you try to tuck in your limbs so you do not touch him.  You never see his face.  He coughs halfway through the performance and then leaves.  You never see him again.
There will be so many faces, floating there in the stagelight like butter.  They speak of meaning, full of life and consequence, deluding dreams and clutching a profound sense of hope amidst all those timid tears.
You will be asked to find answers here.  You will be expected to speak of things as if you've known them all along.  But only questions will slip gently from your tongue.
Only questions.
And that is okay.  From the stranger who sat beside you, and you were too afraid to look at, it is okay.  Keep watching, let stagelights blind you, let words confused, let expressions undo you.
It is okay.

Week 4 - End
A Letter to You
I hope that, in some way, this month has helped you.  I know it has helped me in monumental ways.
I am unsure of what to say here, because even though Journaling Month is ending, the words, emotions and writing will go on and on.  To bring back what I said in the very first Journaling Month post, "Each beginning you or I face is contrasted by the backdrop of a thousand endings."  And this ending, here and now, shall fall away in to the backdrop of a thousand more beginnings.
I want to thank you from the very depth of everything I am if you have read any of my words, if you have found any joy in them, or have pondered over any of my sentences.  It is for you I write.
I will be back with more thoughts, more posts, more words, more life.  I am excited, and I hope you are too, for everything beyond our feet in this elaborate world.
But, for now, I will leave you with what I believe creativity boils down to.
I will leave you with the essence of my artistic endeavors --

Begin.
Understand.
Create.
End.



^(OvO)^          

Journaling Month ~ Week 3 ~ Create

~Here's an explanation of Journaling Month, Week 1 and Week 2~

Note: To try something different, each one of these entries is from an image prompt.  All images can be found at my pinterest, and those few that I could find a source for I have sourced.  However, most I could not hunt down a source for.  No copyright infringement is intended and none of these images are my own.  If, by some strange happenstance, you are the owner of one of these images and would like it removed for whatever reason, please notify me and I'd be happy to do so.

Monday-

There are the unseen, with familiar faces and closed mouths, almost content as the traffic of life passes them by.  These people are supports to the bridge that spans great, turbulent waters.  They stand, so tall, so invisible, so vital. 

Today I saw an unseen.  She stood, a shy pillar, and she looked with timid glances but I could tell she saw everything displayed before her as if the world was reflected in her eyes.  But she never spoke, once.  And I wondered what teemed behind her carefully constructed mask.  

I wish to tell that girl many things, but spoken words fall and dangle from the mouth and souls rarely connect in ways desired.  I want to tell the girl that this vast, colorful world she sees before her is the positions of us all, placed in our hands by Love.

The world belongs to all of us.  We carry it inside us, we breathe it, we change it, we shape and damage it.  It is yours, a gift placed in your existence.  I wish to tell that girl, eyes downcast but perceiving everything, that life is hers to understand.  And I want to weep for the weary; the downtrodden that see the great expanses of meaning and beauty and let it slip away inside them.  The world belongs to all of us, the proud, the good, the fearful and the ugly.  We are all fearfully, wonderfully made.  

Tuesday-

                                            Negative space

                                            In a fallen world

                                            Apoplexy of the soul

                                            Our struggles surface on the whitewash

                                            Dripping down

                                            Beating, heartbeat , beating

                                            And they come and label us as art

                                            Dripping down

                                            In a fallen world

                                            Until we believe the darkness is the meaning

                                            But, perhaps, we were never meant to find beauty here

                                            We create

                                            Beating, heartbeat, beating

                                            Negative space

                                            In a fallen world

Wednesday-

One of the most lovely things about being a writer is reading the uncut prose of children.  Seeing them come, rosy-cheeked, with wide-star eyes and pages full of backwards Es and misspelled, crossed out sentences charging haphazardly around the soupy white page.   

The page, of course, is nothing but cliches, grammatical train wrecks, and a testament to the well-trodden path, stained with ink, that all writers must trudge.  But to a child, it is alive.  It is ablaze with lines, the markings and pencil-scratches that all congrgate to form words.  Ideas.  Stories.  Poetry.

Beauty. 

Nothing pleases me more than a child's pen producing the description 'dancing firelight.'  Because he is alight with these simple, exhausted words.  They fuel him, in his dreams of brilliance and boyhood fame.  He can see the dancing firelight, and I cannot.  He is untainted by the knowledge of cliches, the weight of originality, the pressure of form and has no strive for the unique.  I, on the other hand, am drowned by a desire to create the extraordinary.

The child's fire dances.

My fire reaches out like death, its long wisps of light as fleeting as innocence and its dreadful shadows as deep as the human heart.

And yet I have lost all ability to see the firelight dance.  I have lost the simplicity, the fairyish indifference I require to see something so simple, so marvelous.  

And my heart breaks as I look at my carefullly formed sentences, marching neatly across the page.  For how much more a work of art is a child's scribblings and unabashed cliches, than such a stiff and formal display as mine?  

The child's eyes are alive with dancing firelight.

Mine are half-closed under the weight of black-and-white words.

Never to see the dancing firelight again.             

   

Thursday-

Look What I Found by Danny Ho

                               I caught you something today,

                               I dragged it from the sky.

                               The stars wept for its departure.

                               It shines so brightly, with all the light I have inside,

                               And it is full of craters where imperfections

                               Have kissed like new mothers on baby feet.

                               I brought it here for you,

                               Scraped against the earth, the world

                               And I hope you will accept it now.

                               It is my apology, the moon,

                               And I lay it here for you.  

Friday-

Colorphobia by Matheus Lopes

Today was rather uneventful, but it was not without thoughts, or fears, or aspirations and failures.  I have a tendency, and I believe it is quite a common tendency, to shy away from frightening new experiences and most anything with a likelihood of failure.  I stand, shielding myself from all the fantastic twisting of worthwhile, physical action, and I let it drip by me in a sheen of color foreign to me. 

Observing this, this beautiful display of those who can rush out and take risks that spread joy across people like watercolors, is what I seem to rely on as a source of happiness and hope in the world.  And yet I am not the one participating in these lovely, heartfelt actions.  And I am beginning to feel like I am hiding myself from them, admiring the color of the world while taking no part to splatter my own shades across the canvass.

I want to change that.  I want to dip my hands in the paint of the earth.  I don’t want to be afraid of stained skin.

I want to splatter the colors everywhere.      

Saturday-

She is like the sun, he is like the sky, and to see them together, in their beautiful balancing act of love, is like watching Apollo drag light across the dark expanse of night.  Love, brightly, leans overhead and illuminates the picture, the pinnacle of the two curtains sweeping gently across this stage.   I do not yet know if this is comedy, tragedy, or history – the indecision of the present still burns hot within us all.    

But I think, in this moment, we are happy. 

~excerpt from my current novel-in-progress, This Great Divide  

Week 3 - Create

 This might be the most valuable thing I have learned this week: creativity, and even inspiration, is a choice.  It is possible at any hour, on any day, if you let it come.  I have always thought that I could only write words, or words I was at least somewhat proud of, on extreme incidences where beauty came down and did all the work for me. This is not what I have found.  Your soul is always there, it is always ready for you to reach down and pull up the parts of it you need.

I'll admit, sometimes I scramble writing these entries.  I look at the clock and realize how late it is getting and I type furiously until I have something, anything written down.  But, everyday, I manage to get tiny pieces of my soul on to paper.  Everyday I create, and I find Love doing that.

We are Gifted creations, because we can reflect the Creator and create beauty in this world.  And exercising that gift is the most wonderful thing in the world for me.  

So create today, tomorrow, and continue to cover the world in your soul.  

I will see you next Sunday for the final Journaling Month post.  I hope you all had a great week, and continue to write, and create, and seek out answers and keep asking questions.

^(OvO)^