painted leaves

I can hear the bells ringing.
They sing to me while I am still buried beneath the warmth, eyes shut up, my dreams still in halos around my head. The air coming in at my window breathes like Autumn.
I can feel old footsteps weaving around me, I walk down old paths covered in dust trying to catch a glimpse of a former life, but now it evades me.
And I wonder about it all. I lie there taking in my first aware breaths, breathing in deeply, sighing, what does it mean? Before the rest of the world awakes, what does it mean? In the quiet early morning air that grabs my heart, what does it mean?
I have this peace without explanation, pictures of places, blurred faces of people I know-more than know- people who have become a part of me….a piece of them has made me who I am.
And I walk down this road with a certain sort of solemn air, the dust clinging to my feet, the leaves doing whirlwind dances, the crisp wind waking me and making melodies around me.

I find it odd that the one time of the year that entirely enraptures me is the one where everything is dying. (And I am not alone in that sentiment) And in it’s dying it isn’t frightful, nor does it strive to avoid some mysterious thing that it cannot.
Instead there is a calm.
Instead there is the quiet music.
Instead there are the last remnants of life, bursting brightly into brilliance, mysteries held tightly, the world goes forth into it’s unknown slumber. It remembers something we have forgotten. It remembers and is at peace:
Everything must die to become alive.

Ironically, dying contains the beauty of life and speaks more about it than sometimes the living can. It strips us of something we have tried to hold in closed hands for ourselves. It is the dying that reflects the change in our eyes……
It is the dying that paints where value really dwells.
It is the dying that rips our many misconceptions.
It is the dying that makes us face another who is much more than ourselves.
The very thing so many of us flee from, turn down all paths to avoid, is maybe the one thing that makes this whole living business clear.
Maybe death isn’t really death anymore.
Maybe it’s the beginning of the story. Perhaps all we are living in right now is the great prelude to the real music. A distant echo of sorts.

And I breathe in the Autumns wisps of air. I wait for the painted leaves. I wait for the death that cries out something more than life.
And the mystery of the beauty that reflects in something dying.