Theme Thursday: Orange

Oct. 17, Feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr; patron of the Church in the eastern Mediterranean, the Church in North Africa, and throat diseases.

Generally, I only like pure orange in the context of autumn.  As a winter, spring, or summer color, it's brazen and hot, obnoxious and reminiscent of the clashing colors of the late 70's.

So you'd think I wouldn't miss with a mourning ache the color of leaves turning; the bonfire heat and orange-blush of roasting apples; pumpkins that pop from out of white sheets of frost.  I do.  I miss it so, so much.

It's funny because I only lived in the Midwest--and even then, in a place that was really wooded with Goldengroves unleaving--for a handful of years in very early childhood.  But Tolkien talked about ancestral memory; and it fits my mood and personal mythology to say that the northern blood runs copper-bright in my veins, overpowering the mellow Mediterranean of my more recent ancestors, and drawing me to those paleolithic calenders, interwoven with the seasons, like a moth to a flame--so that when I first set foot in the British isles, it was like coming home again after a long journey.

The Welsh have a word for that inconsolable longing: hiraeth.  It translates roughly to nostalgia, but there is no direct equivalent in the English language.  This fading season is hiraeth's incarnation--a brilliant, sharp, painfully joyous passing--while at the same time being in and of itself only a herald of it.  Sweet, sorrowful parting.  Longing for a home not yet found.