Leaves, autumnal.

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A good few a the plants took a beating with the frost this morning, a few have now died, this is the end of Summer. I like this time of the year, though, it has always been for me mentally fruitful and generous. My pet courgette plant lost a few leaves but will pull through, others won’t, nor will a few of the pumpkins. Some plants do not care and others will even benefit from this.
As I went for my usual walk a little later than customary I did not even know about this cold spell and I felt it was all summery around, and now I am particularly glad I took the time to lie in the dry grass the day before yesterday for a little while and photograph the hazel leaves and the sky above : the light through the leaves is the image of summer I will hold in my heart through the colder months.
I read Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill and thoroughly enjoyed it and will no doubt read it again in the future. Like The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, a governing theme of it is heartbreak, hers being poignantly autobiographical. I abandoned the Pamuk book midway through thoroughly annoyed, so annoyed in fact that I actually read the last couple of pages before returning it to the library, and that confirmed to me that I had done the right thing in giving up. I have also been dipping again in a book I have treasured for years, Palinurus: The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly which also had heartbreak as its genesis. The heart is a powerful muscle, thankfully. Instead of a Letter is a great reflection about what is expected of women, and if a lot has changed, and society has indeed changed dramatically in the intervening years, a lot of funny business is still instilled as subtext to our lives—the book probes the very autumnal question of gauging if one’s life is a success and how that is measured. What made the book particularly touching for me was the evocation of a life spent in books and in the world of publishing. Books saved my bacon like they did for her, and the long years I spent working in publishing I fondly remember now as I am actively remodelling my life, allowing it to sail into uncharted waters.
My homeopathic training will start again now after the reflective summer and I enter my second year, ready to let my mind open ever further. There are great life-saving homeopathic remedies for heartbreak and grieving and one has to be grateful for that.
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