September 24, 2016 - The End of the Road

It’s fitting to see them along the side of the road, the silent sentinels who watch the occasional car passing by.  More often than not, they are a witness to the cows and sheep in the meadow beyond, but now and then, someone will come down the long road and actually notice them.  Some go up the hill and some come down.  The direction traveled is not important because we are all on that road, and each of us will go up the hill and then come down.  Every time.

The silent sentinels.

It’s a long way to travel to get from here to there and back again, but the silent sentinels are patient and they can wait for us.  After all, there is so much to do and we are always so busy.  We pass them by all the time.  All the time . . . as the clock goes tic toc, tic toc.  We’ve got to keep going down that road, even if we’ve forgotten in which direction we’re traveling.

Little American flags line the fence to let us know that American heroes are here.  They traveled the road, too.  Not surprisingly, this road transcends history, and a couple of hundred years are nothing to the road or the soldiers who camp beside it.  What is history but a march on a long road through a fabricated timeline?  All roads still lead to Rome, and somewhere a bugle is calling.

I can’t remember if it’s at the top of the hill or at the bottom where the road ends because I forgot where I began my trek.  But I keep searching for it, just like everyone else, even if we all pretend that we’re not interested in the least.  I keep looking for markers, and every now and then I find a silent sentinel who points the way.  Some days I see more sentinels and some days less.  But they’re always there on the side of the road, if you care to look.  They are markers through that timeline, little notches on a great old stone that spins along its own road.

September 18, 2016 - Chestnut Memories

We were just living.  We didn’t know that we were creating memories, and we weren’t trying to anyway.  And if anyone had told us that we were making history, we’d have laughed outright at them.  How do you make history by just living?  We’d have thought it was absurd, to say the least.

It was right around this time of year when the great chestnut trees of the northeast, those utterly majestic giants, would release their booty.  Thousands upon thousands of chestnuts hidden away in thick, spiky, green shells would fall to the ground, and we’d compete with the squirrels to get them.  There was plenty for everyone and then some, but it never hurt to collect several bags more just in case.  Our eyes gleamed with the prospect!

Worth collecting.

First, we’d fill up large brown paper grocery bags right to the top with “horse chestnuts” and we’d sell them to Old Tom, a farmer who came to town at this time of year to get chestnuts collected by children.  He’d pay us $1 a bag.  We didn’t have plastic grocery bags then, so we had to double-bag the big brown paper bags and then bring them to him in a wagon because the bags were so heavy we couldn’t lift them.  Old Tom would use them to keep the deer busy and happy and away from his orchards.  Contrary to popular belief, horse chestnuts aren’t for horses.

After we made our $1 a bag—and believe me, that was a LOT of money!—it was then time to make different crafts from the chestnuts.  Everyone would steal the awl from their father’s tool chest (no sense in asking because he’d just say no due to the stickiness left on his awl) and we’d pierce each chestnut right through the center until we had a nice even hole straight through.  Then we’d grab twine and make necklaces and bracelets with the chestnuts.  The twine was rough and horrible and would rub our necks completely raw, but we’d rather bleed to death than take off our chestnut necklaces.  We would go door-to-door in town, selling our wares and making even more money.  Oh, the kind-hearted people who bought our goods.

One year, I made a rosary for my mother.  It was absolutely enormous, and the cross at the bottom was made from two popsicle sticks I had glued together.  But it was an authentic rosary in every way, just not very practical, I guess.  You certainly couldn’t discreetly hide it in your pocket.  My mother hung it up on a wall in the house, and there it stayed for many years.  The chestnuts shriveled and gathered dust over that time, but their appeal was still undeniable.

Then the blight came and wiped out all of the great old chestnut trees.  One by one, they were cut down, and the scent was terrible.  I’ll never forget it.  To this day when I smell it, I know the blight is right around the corner, even if the trees in the area appear healthy.  I know what’s coming.  So we lost them all, and now the old enormous chestnut trees are part of history.  Some newer ones still grow, but they never reach the majestic size of the old trees because the blight finds them every time.  Still, there are some trees here and there.

The chestnuts in the photo come from an old graveyard, quite fitting.  The tree is quite big.  It’s not as big as the old trees were, but for a modern-day horse chestnut tree, it’s huge.  It has the blight, though just mildly.  I still collect some of the chestnuts, just for fun, really.  Old Tom died over 25 years ago, and no one cares about a bunch of old chestnuts.  Although, the squirrels still fancy them.

It wasn’t memories we were intending to create or botanical history we were trying to make.  We were just in the right place at the right time.  We were just living.

September 14, 2016 - Dance of the Sunflowers

Giving their last hurrah, like so many suns shining throughout the heavens, the little sunflowers mirror the nighttime sky, awash with stars and dreams of other worlds.  Their perfect echo here on Earth, each flower shines brilliantly in a green sky that stretches on for eternity.  Or at least until fall, but they take no notice of their brief existence.

Dancing to the waltz in the wind . . .

It’s as if they know something we don’t.  It is not a feigned bravery I see in the fields, but an explosion of true confidence borne of an inner knowledge.  A secret.  A ritual.  “I have done this before,” they whisper.  Fearlessly they whip back and forth in a wind that already has an edge of crispness to it, but they meet it head on as a well-rehearsed dance partner on an aristocratic ballroom floor.  Each knows the dance perfectly, having practiced it for many lifetimes, and each knows that this is the last song the band will play tonight.

But it doesn’t matter, because they have done this before, and when their brilliant yellow gowns lie tattered in the mud of the field, washed away by the freezing fall rains, there will be no regrets.  Even the Sun must genuflect at times, His great knee planted into the secret depths of the field.

I would be wise, then, to remember in winter the twinkling golden stars and their secret worlds, fertile with life that begs to spring forth again.  What does a season or two of death matter in the great scheme of things?  The band will play ever anon, and my dance card will be newly full.  And the Old Alchemist?  He continues to weave the golden threads into the harsh grey linen cloth, a King’s tunic in disguise.

September 9, 2016 - No Escape

NO ESCAPE

And it doesn’t matter what they say

how they try to fight against it

pretend worlds going up in smoke

flying apart like last year’s leaves

shredded and forgotten

fertilizer for the next crop

because the Truth faces us every day

square in the eyes

there is no escaping the cycle

I am life and death

the sublime simplicity

ticking away like clockwork

every agony down to the second

every triumph perfectly synchronized

every part played beautifully

the divine actors perpetually gracing the stage

What do the charlatans know of this?

their world of confetti trod into the sewers

like blackened slush from Winter's sorrow

 

September 6, 2016 - In Search of the Signs

It isn’t just about noting the trees changing color or the much cooler morning breeze or the very beginning of the scent of decay in the woods.  Those things are important, of course, and welcome.  They are a sign of the fall.  But it’s more than that.  It’s about aligning ourselves with the inevitable forward step of Nature and being in tune with Natural Law.

The tops of the trees display the sign.

The changes are everywhere evident.  To me, they are screaming, but to others they may be barely noticeable.  In a concrete world, there may be some who don’t even recognize the changes at all.  More’s the pity for that because the change of season that is fast approaching offers us all another chance to realign with Nature, to realign with ourselves, to come home.  We can always do this, of course, but at the change of season it is easiest because all around us is the rhythmic drumbeat of the cycles.  We need only march to the beat.

In a world where we are now told that up is really down and down is really up, confusion abounds.  This is a planned confusion, but it is being touted as natural evolution.  Nothing could be further from the Truth.  There is nothing natural about denying the senses, and there is certainly no evolution whatsoever in chaos.  Confusion is an old tool used by the enemy.

So to the forests we go in search of the signs, and we are never disappointed.  The acorns fall, marching in cadence with the secret drumbeats.  The squirrels frantically store their food away, frivolous but clever little beings they are.  The first V-shaped formation of geese has already been sighted in the skies, and the hermit thrush has been absent for a few weeks now.  Fairy mushroom rings grow everywhere now, and toadstools abound, beckoning the unsuspecting traveler.  The crows are becoming shriller while the vegetation bows slightly in exhaustion, earning a well-deserved rest.  Death is upon us.

Yes, the signs are everywhere, and in the strange concrete world beyond the forest, these signs are more important now than ever before.  In the old days, they reminded us simply to tend to our fields, finish our harvests, store our food, and look for the Hunter’s Moon.  While they still do that, their main raison d'être now is to act as an anchor for those of us who come searching for the Truth, and this they do quite well.

They remind us that the world is still exactly as it always was, and it is up to us to choose what we will see and what we will put away from us.  The sun still rises and sets.  The Earth still turns.  Hot is hot and cold is cold, and up is still up, while down is still down.  They remind us that the seasons march on in perfect cadence, always displaying what Nature intended.  They remind us that we, too, are still exactly as we always were, and no man may tell us differently unless we allow him to.  They give us a sense of continuity, familiarity, and comfort.

And when we leave the forests, we bring that knowledge with us.  We are anchored once again in Truth, and we will not be moved without permission.  This is the gift of the change of seasons.  We are not fooled.