Everything is moving quickly now — the days, the color change in the leaves, my perception of the passing of time. I feel autumn in the air but it’s passing fast like clouds in a storm. This morning on the way to work I could not account for the time. Seems like just yesterday I was sweltering in summer heat and today the leaves are jumping off the trees. I swear time would slow down if I just rode more often.
Mornings of late have had a strange yellow-orange glow which gives the world a pumpkin colored feeling. The fragrance of crisp, dead leaves fills the air and stirs memories of family outings and picnics with my parents. Autumn triggers heavy melancholy feelings as my body must know that things are dying, that the process with the leaves is the same for every living thing.
Must be careful not to dwell long in that place.
I love the mornings when I get out of bed early enough to ride a lazy course to work, one that allows many stops for thought and pictures. Mount Nittany hasn’t changed but I have. Change isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
The trees outside my office windows (the two on the ground floor-left) are almost finished. The leaves have moved from verdant green to yellow, orange and red and soon they’ll all succumb to gravity and leaf blowers. The crane lifting new heating and ventilation units onto the roof will be gone soon as well allowing all the scooter and motorcycle riders back to the now cordoned off parking spaces.
Man, I hope this dismal feeling goes away soon. If I weren’t so tired right now I’d get on the Vespa and try to sweat it out.
Steve,
Oh WOW! You have really got ~IT~ bad. Something is really eating at you, it sounds so anyway. Of course I don’t know you personally and would never ask you to explain. But I do have a suggestion that may help. It is this… You are a photographer so go photograph some hard-core street photography. Not at States but into the inner city. Take the whole day! Strangers, faces, shoes…they all tell stories and let the images ~speak~ to you! The homeless, the lonely, the zoned out, the old ones all have their visual stories. Sometimes a look at truer misery has a way of turning us around to the positives we have and grow wary of. Autumn is not a time for all things dying. It is a time for the fruits of our labors to come to pass. A time of full circle cycles. A time to both reflect and to plan anew for the coming of the next Spring harvests. Winter is a time of waiting, hard as that is at times. Waiting to feel alive again! Me, I sleepwalk through Winter at best. I dislike the cold and hate the waiting! I spent 18 years in ~MinneSNOWta~ and 9 months of it every year was Winter or Winter-ish. Hard-core street photography at its best! Those conditions will wake up anyone’s spirits. Just sayin’, cuz I really like ya. I really hear your pain. Did you know that in the Jewish faith this time of year is the ONLY time we are commanded to rejoice?! At no other time are we commanded to do so…I think it was done to ready us for the dreaded Winter waiting 😉
I live in Florida now but am originally from the Pittsburgh area and attended college in Erie, PA. I understand what you mean with the coming of winter in Pennsylvania. It is not a feeling of dread but more of melancholy, it’s the inevitable. It’s the darkness and the wet and the ever bitter cold.
It wears on us Pennsylvanians. It feels like spring will never come…but it does. And it is glorious.
Steve, sometimes I wish I could just go right by work with my Scoot and just keep going.
Brent
Steve, I read somewhere…..sometimes it takes more than a tankful or five of riding to put things into perspective…..
I think things will pep up for you come the first snows…..I know it will for me.
It does sound like a trip of some sort is needed. Preferably heading south…
Steve, it’s time young man, to not feel like an old man, a future grandfather no less.
Perhaps it is also deadline time, deadline in terms of being an editor of a regular publication
when it all falls on your shoulders to get the copy to the printer, on time and complete. Without error or similar goofs.
Thing is suspect your melachonia is not just what is happening in your world; it is all round us. That time of year when your illnesses of life don’t always seem to be yours. Time to hike oneself over to the Creamery and get something enjoyable to eat. The heck with the diet or anything else. Indulge yourself. Get enough fattening items to feed some to Junior which will not do his diet any good, but hey if you don’t indulge yourself in those good things, then give them to Junior…
Go wandering off to the local Kissell retail shop and look at all the new offerings on display, sit on a few, think of what might just be. Maybe take a day off mid-week and do nothing, stay in bed, sleep, ignore the world beyond…you’re of an age where retirement may loom in the distance, Then again what will you do after working every day is no longer an option? Or can you stay employed at the university beyond a normal retirement age????
Look at your long term options. Oh and done any photography of a non-digital nature?
Watch any prints from negatives from your Leica appear in the developing tray of late? Now that’s a magical process which no computer can provide…
Ever thought of putting a little drop of alcoholic spirit in your caffeine atSaints Cafe?
Operating a two hweeled device is not always the same old any more…is it?
Steve, sounds like you need some time to play … just play. Nature knows that all things living need time to rest and rejuvenate that’s why we have winter; we need to take her advice.