SquarePeg Books

Yesterday evening I noticed the leaves on certain trees are beginning to dry and curl, not in a diseased or dehydrated way. The green on most deciduous trees isn’t as vibrantly green as it was in June–there’s just a hint more yellow in it.

Today I noticed the sunlight was different. A slightly different quality to it, just a hair of a different angle, the frequency of the color has  shifted just a notch.

Autumn.

The season actually doesn’t officially start until the calendar says September 21ish (or July 5 if you follow the retail calendar for Halloween), but I always see it about three weeks before. Once I do see it, I always wonder how I missed the beginning of the change.

The other members of my family don’t see it. They never have. They never do until the green has half faded into yellow. Even then, they could miss it until one day they realize there’s a great deal of crunchy stuff under foot.

Perhaps it’s a result of the technical theatre training I’d had, some 30 years ago. The lighting labs challenged us to recreate the color temperature and angle of famous paintings.

It could be because I learned to look for patterns and cues at a young age, dissecting the scene and the person before me like some wannabe Sherlock.

Perhaps I’m just maudlin’, lately. Slowing down to notice the things that one normally speeds by, whether I want to or not.

Overthinking, leaping from one activity/errand/chore to the next until I fall over, can cause a subconscious to put on the brakes, one way or another.

Slow down.

Look at the trees for a bit.