Seven Quick Takes: Volume 7

Swatches of Autumn 

-- 1 --

Martin knew it was autumn again, for Dog ran into the house bringing wind and frost and a smell of apples turned to cider under trees.  In dark clock-springs of hair, Dog fetched goldenrod, dust of farewell-summer, acorn-husk, hair of squirrel, feather of departed robin, sawdust from fresh-cut cord wood, and leaves like charcoals shaken from a blaze of maple trees.  Dog jumped.  Showers of brittle fern, blackberry vine, marsh-grass sprang over the bed where Martin shouted.  No doubt, no doubt of it at all, this incredible beast was October.

From "The Emissary," by Ray Bradbury.

-- 2 --

This time of year always makes me feel unsettled.  (But I like the feeling.)  A liminal season, autumn, though no less liminial than spring.

Perhpas because the doorways between worlds and ways are unhinged, unguarded.  Anything could happen.  My soul matches the leaves falling like tongues of flame, the sharp contrast between bonfire heat and bone-brittle winds.

-- 3 --

-- 4 --

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Márgarét, are you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, líke the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

 It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

-- 5 --

Remember these old-fashioned spitting cats?  I'm pretty sure we had some very similar looking ones from my childhood that got lost in a move.  Martha Stewart does Halloween with style.  

My friend Josh said, "She's like Lord Voldemort.  She just keeps coming back."

-- 6 -- 

Josh holds up a baby peacock Halloween costume, saying, "Here you go, since you've been reading Flannery O'Connor."  I look at the tag.  It says something like Princess Fantasy Costumes.  Now, why is this a little girl's outfit when it is the male of the species that flaunts the fabulous tail feathers?

-- 7 --

Needless to say, I settled on a pumpkin/jack-o-lantern costume instead.