An Ode to the Equilux

Is nothing sacred?

A false Autumn - the effect of Horse Chestnut Leaf Miners

Almost two years ago, I wrote a piece called Autumn Leaves/Les feuilles mortes, musing on Eva Cassidy and her untimely early death and the turning of the world. My wife, Amanda, was still with us, but she was already then in residential care, although when I composed the piece she had just spent several very confusing days in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King’s Lynn, having possibly suffered a minor stroke.

Now, as the autumn leaves begin to fall again, it is over six months since she died. Who knows where the time goes? I may be sentimental, but why not? It’s not wrong to miss someone, even though the world keeps on turning, and there’s no going back. 

And I am.  I do....

Sunday was the Autumn Equinox, traditionally defined as the time when the plane of Earth's equator passes through the geometric centre of the Sun's disk. The sun appears to rise due east and set due west and, in theory, the day is as long as the night, though we don’t have the light switch dusks and dawns that (almost) occur on the equator. 

But now I learn that in fact we have a few days when the days are still longer than the nights due to refraction of the sun’s rays through the atmosphere, so we have to wait for the Equilux to get our full night’s sleep..... 

Is nothing sacred?

The spent flowers of the Sweet Chestnut

So, instead of equinoctial gales, are we now to expect equiluctial storms? I cannot find the word, and when I look it up I find that equinoctial storms are something of a myth anyway (pace Boris, et al). But in researching that particular word, I find myself surrounded by words I didn’t know before. 

Ouch! 

I didn’t know I suffered from Occhiolism – which apparently is a neologism for the awareness of the small scope of one's own perspective and the way it limits one's ability to fully understand the world.....

Well, that certainly helps!

Traces of a squirrel feast

Nor did I know that I may have Agnosthesia – which is the state of not knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your own behaviour, as if you were some other person. 

I wish I’d never looked. 

And then there’s Oneirataxia - the inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality.... 

Well, I just didn’t know there was a word for it!

Sycamore leaf showing Tarspot Fungus

And as for Kairosclerosis - the moment you realize that you're currently happy - consciously trying to savour the feeling - which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it's little more than an aftertaste. 

Oh Lord, take me now!

Seeds of the Common Lime

But, where was I? 

Oh yes, Autumn leaves..... Amanda and I used to love Autumn in Italy. A sharpness in the light. The plumes of smoke from the chestnut groves, as the contadini cleared the ground ready for the harvest.  The cars by the morning roadside, left by city workers gleaning porcini (Boletus Edulis) from the woods to gain a week’s wages in a peaceful few hours (not to mention to augment the family tables).... Picnics with the kids playing in the aromatic airs near Lago di Vico, feasting on cassoulet and hunks of fresh bread.....

Oh yes...

Since you went away the days grow long

And soon I'll hear old winter's song

But I miss you most of all my darling

When autumn leaves start to fall

Johnny Mercer

Oh no....

Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s’aiment

Tout doucement sans faire de bruit

Et la mer efface sur la sable

Les pas des amants désunis

{But life separates those who are in love

Gently, without a sound,

And the sea erases from the sand

The footprints of parted lovers}

Jacques Prévert

All pictures taken in the last two days on my iPhone 

It's not what you see - it's how you see it.....

And I am not alone,

while my love is near me,

I know it will be so,

until it's time to go,

So come the storms of winter,

and then the birds in spring again,

I have no fear of time.

For who knows,

how my love grows?

And who knows,

where the time goes?

Sandy Denny

PS:  If you haven't yet ordered a copy of my new book about NW Norfolk, please don't miss the chance!  It will make a beautiful Christmas present....

£12 a copy (plus p&p) but all will go to charity (The National Brain Appeal and The Friends of St Mary's, Snettisham) after print costs have been met....

Just email me: richardpgibbs@aol.com

In memory of Amanda

Thanks

Richard

Autumn Leaves

Les feuilles mortes 

It is, suddenly, autumn. I have been away. Then I was floored by a measly virus. I woke, and it was Autumn. The summer had gone, and winter was nigh.

And what, who is left?  It is autumn.  The leaves are falling.  First Her Madge.  Now MissTrusst.   Khasi Kwarteng. The pound.  Braverbitch.  The conversative prattle. All trussed up and nowhere to go.....

Jacques Prévert had this to say, around 1945 perhaps:

Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle

Tu vois, je n’ai pas oublié

Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle

Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi

Some time later, thanks to Johnny Mercer, perhaps, Nat "King" Cole, Frank Sinatra et al, the poem became famous as Autumn Leaves, and, should you wish to hear an angel sing, please try this:

https://youtu.be/xXBNlApwh0c

[And, should this link not work, look for Eva Cassidy, Autumn Leaves on Youtube.]  

Eva died in 1996, just 33 years old, but so beautiful.....

So little time.  So much love.

I took a walk the other day.  I wanted to reflect on the season, on the good things. I met a robin. The bird sang to me, looking this way and that, and I wanted it to last for ever....

I find the autumn rich in many ways. Rough pigs snuffle up the prodigious harvest of sweet chestnuts, careless of my approach:

A kestrel windhovers, with respect to Gerard Manley Hopkins, following the infrared trails of shrews in the grass while scores of Redwing flit by as specks in the sky, shy to man, but intent on harvesting the hedgerows to flesh up for a hard winter.....

Then he falls to rest, tired of the game, maybe wondering why the marsh is so dry, why there is still that taste of summer's burning, why there are so few shrews just now....

While just one of the so many migrant redwings fails for a nanosecond to escape my lens (except, he wins - I am too slow).....

The falling leaves drift by my window

The falling leaves of red and gold

It is so beautiful today.  Time stands shakily still. I think of leavers, fallers. Yes the arrogant, ambitious, careless politicians, who have brought us to the brink, but, much more importantly, those friends who have lived their lives honestly and given at least as much as they took.  I have been to two funerals this week, celebrations of lives well spent.  And at this moment Amanda, my dear partner of some forty years lies in hospital puzzled by the comings and goings of strangers, having spent hours and hours in an ambulance at the doors of A & E....  

I see your lips the summer kisses

The sunburned hands I used to hold

Since you went away the days grow long

And soon I'll hear old winter's song

Eva Cassidy's life was so short, but her recordings are so uplifting.  How is it that the good die so young, while we are left with the shameful dross?  

I walk home from Amanda's Care Home.  I find a horse with tears in her eyes.  What does she know?

A Pied Wagtail poses for me, brave against the future, risking its all against my heavy lens.  If only such pertness was coupled with human sensitivity, maybe people might love each other more.  A smart little bird, living for the moment.  No ambition (?) and no intention to profit from others.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past....

But I miss you most of all my darling

When autumn leaves start to fall

I miss you most of all my darling

When autumn leaves start to fall