A Season Within A Season

Thanks to my kollege komrade from our USC days, Andy, for sharing this picture with me. Andy has a real passion for photography, and he's quite good at it. This is a 2003 shot of an elderly, disabled man on South Carolina's Huntington Beach, shot with slide film and manipulated in such a way that the colors and shades take on a life of their own. Click on the post title for a link to one of Andy's galleries.

This is November.

Distinctly November.

The sky is blue in a way they always say skies are blue -- where you can't believe that beyond this terrestrial canvass is the black expanse of outer space; where a stray cloud crossing the sky distinguishes itself as if it were a chalk line trying to spell something divine to us.

Shadows are rich, deep. The juxtaposition of life and decline is stark when the sun lowers in its horizon.

There is a hue to November. A mournful, reflective, resigned, brownish-cool-bluish glow surrounding everything.

They tell us this is autumn, that the sun has not yet made its full retreat from the Tropic of Cancer. That is how we define what is winter and what is fall and what is spring and summer.

But this is more.

This is November.

Not fall or winter.

It is a season within a season -- a mirror of our lives that we are loathe to look into, because it compels us to acknowledge how impermanent each moment is.

We speak of life as childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, elderly.

But it's more than that. And somewhere within us we know of the moments within larger moments.

We know that, on this beach on the Fourth of July, the sky is a gray haze and few shadows are ever cast. We are then in the fullness of light, granting us the luxury of suspending self-reflection.

But it is here -- where shadows deepen and begin to illustrate to us the true contrast -- that this undefined season imparts its wisdom.

These are the last days of the decline. Our gaze is inward. We reflect on what we were and try to find a way to imagine what it is we wanted to be.

A devoted parent? An existential fool? An iron-fisted ruler? A spiritual healer?

Or, maybe, a man who can defy physics, break the chains that bind him and fly?

It's difficult now, as we see the first signs of the sun creeping back toward the fullness of light, to imagine this time a mere few months removed yet seemingly so distant. A fleeting moment captured in color and shadow and metaphor.

Life, today, in this present season within a season, is peeking through, defying the cold freeze that ultimately marked the finality of our descent.

We see forward now.

We cast off reflection in favor of what will be.

We are renewing ourselves.

The shadows melt into the light.