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| Courtesy Merriam Webster Dictionary |
My parents often like to say how lucky I am to live where I do, and I do agree, but if there is one thing that I wish we had in California it is Autumn. California has three seasons: Fire, Earthquake and Mud. Okay, I am slightly joking, but when I see places awash with snow or Autumn leaves (that I don't have to rake up myself) I wish it happened where I live. There's something endemic about October and November that says that they should be cool or cold. Instead they've been blisteringly warm for as long as I can remember. Invariably Halloween is a chilly 90 degrees at night, whereas when I was a kid I remember it being much cooler. Perhaps that is just wishful memory.
I find myself thinking of places like Nikko where there seemed to be a sea of Autumn, where it felt like a true fall surrounded me. Such places were invigorating, not only because they were in a country I loved but because they were something I don't get to experience much anymore if at all. I think that as humans we are meant to see and experience the seasons, or at least some of us are. There are plenty who can live in the deserts forever and not be bothered by the starkness or the heat. I'm not one of them, but I have experienced such places too and felt something unique about that environment that spoke to me as a human being.
Maybe it is just man and nature. With Covid plans for travel have gone awry and I've been stuck in a loop of the same things day in and out. Work often feels like the same thing I did for 15 years. It is easy to feel alone when you have no peers to talk to everyday, no real escape. Growing up, I could make my own worlds and people to talk to, but its been a struggle to be creative for a few years now. The one spark I had was through an extended vacation, and that is difficult to do now.
So I find myself blue in Autumn, yearning for warm colors and cool breezes to lift me up and carry me away.