Autumn’s first morning tucks back into the hours, seasoning to winter. Waking to the straw quiet is forgotten. They say the globe circles the sun. Let them say that, here there is something tangible pulling the hands of the sun together on the southern horizon. Summer stretches its hands, and then subsides but one knows, because a certain day tells us, that life will not close loudly.
That hasn’t happened for any of us, not yet, every year the terminations of the sun turning back at the shortest day. But a certain day passes, as if we need—no, not a whole day, just an hour—or a moment each year, a single moment to get us used to the idea of silence, of peace.
The first day of Autumn is like no other. So significant in its lack, it remains in the subconscious even after its easily missed importance is replaced by more celebrated days. A single point on the orbit, you remember your love affair with breath only after the last of dream wears off of the night before, a small window you look out of into the still field. You stop breathing for a moment, as if to make a deity of that breath—the day is too quiet!
The first day of Autumn. The fields have all been carried ant by ant to a single spot, and brought back to light empty. Inside the husk ring the yard swept down to minutiae. If you’re lucky enough to be on your belly, the tops of the little mountain range at eye level, the morning rising bright behind you huge in your miniature condition, maybe a crow somewhere protesting such miniature silence, you’d see even the year’s quietest sunrise under each little husk, tiny shadows about the fly away, lift the rubbish back to begin anew. The year is finished, taking with it all the dreams you never needed after all.
Apart from individuals Man, that collective force, never ceases to invent new ways of saying tired things. I think today is Memorial Day, or maybe Labor Day. They tell me this day marks the end of summer, forgetting about the low quiet. But the Great Recession doesn’t prove Autumn enough. Not enough to interrupt <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Enterprise with a little thought or doubt.
Enterprise, a season so fundamental, a shadowless fundamentalism. Its one flat season sends down shadows into the Soul. The Shadowless Outside Soul, and shadow moves inward. Holiday rises, a shadowless thing against silence. Men take their women and children out into the bright activity, where brightless duplicates of them rise flat from every surface to make dark literature of hearts. And we’re all marked with our neuroses. The smell of incomplete combustion. Thank God for Gasoline and the color Red!
I may have compatriots in quietness here at THINQon. Is there such an hour for you? Is there an hour so quiet you can wear red shoes?
