En Route to Riverside, 11/8/10

I'm on my way toward somewhere I've never been.

The sky is overcast, white with cottonmouth clouds muffling the voice of God so he seems far away from us. The road before us, the sky and branches, the cars are grey and the leaves have already turned blood red and are dripping from the trees as they prepare for their annual demise.

Everything has fallen. It is fall, and everything has a downward direction. Some cells in my body are crying out little death rattles. Part of me is dying... but also, like the trees I am lighter now.

They have laid down their arms and given up on the sun. They have shed their delicacy and stopped reaching outward... declared abstinence from their tree sex and from their provocative adornments. It is almost winter and now they stand tall and naked, strong and brave in self-embrace. They are ready.

When things change like this, if you keep looking for beauty and inspiration in all the same places, you will be sorely disappointed. These days the beauty is in the letting go, and the death rattles, and the blood leaves dripping from the trees.

It sounds tragic, but as I write this the sun pierces its way through the clouds and bathes the mountains in a rare blaze of saturated brilliance. In its transient light, the forest is on fire- the cotton has been pulled from God's mouth and he is screaming and the fiery trees are screaming back at him in E minor, and it sounds sad, but also very pretty.

It was over before I even realized it. I'm not even sure if I remembered it right. I'm not even sure it happened at all.

White rocks, golden trees. Foggy mountains. Things which may or may not have happened.

A beginning, that starts with an end.