A Time and a Season

There is a time and season for everything under the sun, or clouds--as the case was today. Every season divine. I have been reveling in the graceful beauty of this fall. There is something about this time of year which reaches beyond the bouquets of sharpened pencils and crispness of the air. There is something more to the raking of the colorful leaves, the picking of pumpkins and apples. The oneness I feel with nature goes beyond simply being outdoors to witness the bluest of skies and general vividness of the colors surrounding me. I have yet to be able to soak in enough of this wonderful autumn. My words being inadequate...let me borrow John Donne:

Elegy IX: The Autumnal by John Donne

No spring nor summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnall face.
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot 'scape.
If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame,
Affection here takes Reverence's name.
Were her first years the Golden Age; that's true,
But now she's gold oft tried, and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time,
This is her tolerable Tropique clime.
Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence,
He in a fever wishes pestilence.
Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were,
They were Love's graves; for else he is no where.
Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit
Vowed to this trench, like an Anachorit.

And here, till hers, which must be his death, come,
He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb.
Here dwells he, though he sojourn ev'ry where,
In progress, yet his standing house is here.
Here, where still evening is; not noon, nor night;
Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at revels, you at counsel, sit.
This is Love's timber, youth his under-wood;
There he, as wine in June enrages blood,
Which then comes seasonabliest, when our taste
And appetite to other things is past.
Xerxes' strange Lydian love, the Platane tree,
Was loved for age, none being so large as she,
Or else because, being young, nature did bless
Her youth with age's glory, Barrenness.
If we love things long sought, Age is a thing
Which we are fifty years in compassing;
If transitory things, which soon decay,
Age must be loveliest at the latest day.
But name not winter-faces, whose skin's slack;
Lank, as an unthrift's purse; but a soul's sack;
Whose eyes seek light within, for all here's shade;
Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than made;
Whose every tooth to a several place is gone,
To vex their souls at Resurrection;
Name not these living deaths-heads unto me,
For these, not ancient, but antique be.
I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay
With tombs than cradles, to wear out a day.
Since such love's natural lation is, may still
My love descend, and journey down the hill,
Not panting after growing beauties so,
I shall ebb out with them, who homeward go.

Reading this again, I think of the book I just finished called The Road Less Traveled by Scott M. Peck and Persuasion by Jane Austen. The theme resonates with where I am write now and causes me to think of Ecclesiastes 3:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." No worrying needed. I like that! :)

Besides the fall, I am in a season of busy-ness. I am working two jobs: I am a lifeguard at Healthtrax (a gym), and as a VerizonWireless sales girl...so of course I am in love with the Droid phones. Especially the Droid X and the Incredible. Luckily, I am kept from temptation by the fact that I am broke. That'll do it every time! ;)

In my down time (and pool time), I have been doing quite a bit of writing and reading and stretching and growing in the past few months...just not directly on my blog. A lot of my thoughts have been translated into letters (which too often go unsent...working on that!) and into songs, and into other writings. I hope to get some of these thoughts up soon. I am in such a personal state of transition. The question "what actually happens in the caterpillars cocoon during metamorphosis?" is being revealed to me. I wish that I could sleep through it, as the caterpillar does, and simply wake up as a butterfly. But it doesn't work that way.