Autumn Equinox
Today is the first day of Fall. It’s the third season of the year and the only one that has two names–Autumn and Fall. I like Fall. It’s the last of the harvest time. Things slow down. Leaves…fall. Nights become longer and temperatures cool. And today is the Autumn Equinox–the day when night and day are of equal lengths.
I swept out my house of all the Spring and Summer dust and dirt. I moved the furniture around and swept some more. I took the carpets outside and swept and beat them. Oh Gretapie, I love you so, but you have so much hair. Your fibers of love are everywhere! I got down on my hands and knees and washed and rinsed the floor in every room…well almost, there is one more to go that has most all the overflow storage for my pie workshops.
It’s not quite cold enough to set up the huddle spot around the wood stove but I moved the furniture around anyway. Family and friends who know me well have heard me say on more than one occassion, “It’s my reason to be!”…moving furniture around that is. 😉 I brought the carpets back inside. Then I opened all the windows and lit a smudge stick of cedar and let the smoke wash over me and fill all the rooms.
Tonight I will light a fire and think of the many blessings that I am so lucky to be harvesting. I will pour a glass of apple brandy and toast wonderful friends near and far, new and old, and some that I have lost in the season past, and I will surround my family with love.
I studied music for many years and just before I turned twenty I was accepted to and attended Manhattan School of Music. I wanted to be an interpreter of art song, lieder, and oratorio. Here is a song I studied and sang in my teens and twenties. When I chose to go in to accompanying rather than vocal performance, it is a song that I played on many occasions, too… but I always remember how much I loved to sing it. Now that I am older, the words mean so much more. A translation is below. The hauntingly beautiful music is by Gabriel Fauré.
Autumn, time of misty skies and heart-breaking horizons,
of rapid sunsets and pale dawns,
I watch your melancholy days
flow past like a torrent.
My thoughts borne off on the wings of regret
(as if our time could ever be relived!)
dreamingly wander the enchanted slopes
where my youth once used to smile.
In the bright sunlight of triumphant memory
I feel the scattered roses reblooming in bouquets;
and tears well up in my eyes, tears which my heart
at twenty had already forgotten!
~ Armand Silvestre (1837-1901) translated by Peter Low
Many blessings to you all.