Outside, as the sun rises, somewhere behind this persistent wall of gray that envelops the city, I see this autumn landscape almost turned winter. A state of surrender, suspended. Dendral sticks poking up toward the sky, sprung from branches that seem to reach out from all of the busy reaching just to find a place to poke up their sticks. No point to it now, leaves are all gone, decaying. Their season of duty has passed. This is all just a framework of great potential, standing by until springtime.
And yet, this still and chilly freezeframe seems just as essential, moment by moment, as the mornings and afternoons of photosynthetic flourish, as the whispered giggles when August rains patter down through the foliage. So essential that if the canopy were to erupt spontaneously into a shimmering verdant burst, leaves aplenty, it would be a betrayal of this moment, a violation of the rite, no more appropriate than charging into a memorial service in a colorful sundress and shaking a tambourine.
There is no gaiety just out my window, but this is just as it should be. And that muted, near-dead feeling that comes with its contemplation, well, that’s just part of the cycle, too. So I sit and hunt through the mist for the prisms of architecture, the dome of the gimnázium, chimney blocks and rooflines, church spires and just then a chunky magpie sweeps through and disappears into the fog, for no other reason than to confirm it all.
