Emotional Equinox

Drifting, between the seasons

I used to sit here under this young olive tree that they unexpectedly cut down and write. For weeks, every day. But recently there’s just an empty box. A pen with no ink. I am not sure why. Today I have decided to sit and see.

I do think it is part of life’s tapestry sometimes to be quiet. It doesn’t feel like I have gone into a hibernation.

It’s not a failing, to be silent. It’s a beautiful thing. One doesn’t have to fill the silence with chatter always, do we?

It’s far from coincidence that silent is an anagram of listen. I think I am just lacking in a bit of spare time to listen in. That’s all.

Maybe this is because we are between seasons. There’s no storm, no full moon, we’re mid-tide. While Nasa prepares to intercept an asteroid out in space, I seem to have hit a void, an emotional equinox. Neither one thing nor the other, too neutral for words to form.

The last few cicadas, the ones who don’t give up easily, are only just singing. A much slower, quieter song. An almost despondent call. One of them chatters in slow motion. The coquettish symphony is just a summer memory. The thousands who screeched to high heaven at me in August must have gone back to base to recharge.

The vines are a changing. Their dull green leaves are echoes of summer. Leaves bedraggled, shredded and perforated from August hail.

Although there are no heartwarming autumnal colours here yet, the grasses are standing tall and strong, they are showing off, in shuddering waves, aroused by the breeze. They are here thanks to the storms that shrunk summer to fit into today.

Those deafening storms left their foot print on the forest floor. Dry pine needles are perfectly sieved, blindly sorted in parallel, deftly stacked by the rain. Water flowed fast and plentiful over the earth, full of passion in the middle of the night.

My sky is almost empty of birds. I have no idea where they all got to. I wish I knew. It’s full of beautiful colourful clouds though, everyday.

It feels as if everything is queueing and braced for autumn. I must be writing in the lull in between. Our god of seasons here is sitting on the fence. Here anyway. The news is full of tragic stories. Maybe the god of seasons is quarrelling with the god of tempest.

For the first time since setting off I feel the chill in the air. ‘Goodbye summer’. I love your embrace, your starry nights, but I hate the height of you, almost with equal measure. Your heat wave of six weeks long nearly beat me, but I didn’t let you win. I am stronger than that.

Stronger than I look. Stronger than I think.

We are. Much stronger than we think, stronger than the reflection in the mirror that we search. The voice of the mirror is shallow. We go deeper. Way deeper, down to the goodness.

All the good is bundled up in us, wound in perfect rounds, like fresh knitting wool, soft, textured, full of secrets, woven to unravel and full of promise, kept cosy, colourful and cocooned in a gender free soul that we were born with and can never lose.

The pen on paper tells me all is not lost; the compass needle has just realigned. That this breather was all that was needed.

I thank myself for sitting in the middle of nowhere, for being no-one, for not being a afraid of silence because it put me and my self back on a map, although I have no idea where I am going and I don’t really care. Simply happy with the wondering of where I might be heading.

between the seasons by Pipp