"When everything else has gone from my brain ... what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that." Annie Dillard
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Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Quick Change Artist
It took a glimpse of winter to scare us into fall. Oh, I know the chemical explanation. Or the lay version of it. Leaves need a shock of cold air in order to change color.
But look at it another way: The trees still clothed in summer green, shivering in the snow, telling themselves, this isn't working. We need to strip down, and fast.
Overnight, we have autumn. The trees I know, the dependably flashy ones, have burst into yellow and orange. The air smells both acrid and sweet. And on a hurried walk, I spot an artful arrangement of crimson maple leaves snagged in a net of spent clematis. I relax my shoulders and move on.