In Mid-Fall

Fall colors are the Earth’s last desperate attempt to slow our descent into the white. The trees whisper, “If this is not enough to keep you here, then you may pass along; but know that you must never return this way again.” The leaves teach us, if we care to know, of the meaning of color and light.

The prism of the body refracts pure being, in the process creating all that passes for good and beautiful in our experience, and fills us with wonder. Yet somehow we feel ourselves letting go, and drifting passively forward on time’s arc to dissolve into the world beyond the prism, the light behind the array of colors. Wonder and longing give way to weakness and resignation, precisely when we have the most to wonder about and long for. We allow ourselves to simply disappear into the colorless light rather than strain against all hope to see it as it is, which means to know it as the source of the colors of our experience.

Humans pass this way, year after year, following their weakness, and only a little wistful about the refracted light they pass on their way through to the nothingness of pure being devoid of understanding, as though the loss (i.e., they themselves, as seeing souls) were insignificant.

(Click on the images below for a large view.)