AUTUMN DALLIANCE – 50 Gms

“Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter’s deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world’s oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.” ― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet

 It is sheer joy of the world’s oldest performance art – essence of two autumn leaves – the dalliance of the B157 and AV2 in the Autumn heat; It is a photograph – imprinted with the violence of intention – irrefutable evidence of occurrence but missing any context or narrative. The mind tries; to build a narrative; to bridge the gaps for meaning to crossover but is hushed. Gently. “The all-mighty mind, hushed, meaning stumped?” So, it seems. Is it so hard to see the mind quelled and meaning quashed – both succumbing to pleasure? Is it so hard to abandon a search, find rest in the desired, find a love that’s easy to bear in the autumn heat- the kind of heat that turns the ‘ripe’ into cider.

The dalliance – ardor of AV2 giving in to the fervor of B157 – notes going from allegro to largo and back again – an Oolong of susurrous winds and incisive mornings of Autumn country – where the sun sits lower in the sky and the river, each day is a full measure colder. It doesn’t quite feel settled – the vibrant, fresh, sweet-grassiness of the AV2 with a mellow fruitiness is always the first greeting – then again, dalliances are frivolous – not looking to settle. But the AV2 allegro quickly succumbs to the largo of B157 Mango, Honey and Apricots with a pleasant Floral orgone – and the mind is hushed, gently. But before long the mind tries to ossify the narrative again – which is when the tempo is completely shuffled and the mind hushed, again. Later steeps yield the Varnish with a leafy finish – very reminiscent of the refreshing Indian Betel Leaf. The rest is too fickle, too fervorous- different from its photograph- to be described. There are tones of the Autumn Caprice, Masquerade and Oh Mercy but that’s just the mind building a narrative – the dalliance has its own tempo; its own flow – it doesn’t begin slowly, tries to slow its tempo but never quite ends – which is to say, narratives don’t matter.

“Is sorrow the true wild? And if it is—and if we join them—your wild to mine—what’s that? For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation. What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying. I’m saying: What if that is joy?” – Ross Gay, The Book of Delights