Gathering His jewels

Autumn is my favourite season. It has been said (and I usually think it a pleasant thought) that Autumn is a second spring with every leaf a flower. I may have mis-quoted that slightly and I can't remember who said it (and this is a time that I refuse to default to google for my memory but that's another topic) but that's the gist of the quotation. In any case it is a pleasant thought and I do agree but at the same time I think other metaphors are equally powerful in describing the beauty of Autumn and go beyond by exploring the aspect of age that is absent in any springtime metaphors.

This picture, to me, embodies something that I've often felt about leaves but never described or captured quite so well before. When looking at a leaf such as this one in a regular manner it would appear lifeless. The glory of display has left (if it was ever there) and it has fallen into a heap of other seemingly dull dead detritus. But when you see it at the proper angle and it catches the light it becomes a glowing gemstone - something it couldn't be until that moment in time. I could go on about what thoughts this metaphor brings to mind and what lessons I get from this object but I don't have time and I think it might take away from the simplicity of the image.

Fictional musings

I have been doing a bit of editing this past while (and loving it) and have been asked by several different people if I intend on writing anything myself at any time soon. This is a question that I have struggled with on and off ever since starting my University career. Before that time I would write little dribbles of stories and had several more ideas brewing at all times. But then all that was cut off partially by being busy developing actual writing skills (although I never took part in a creative writing workshop so just dealing with the mechanics of writing) and partially by seeing what good writing truly looks like from the inside. I realize now that what I liked to compose during my highschool days were really just written-out daydreams. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I've just passed by the stage in which I want to imagine my life being lived out in a multitude of other ways. What it all comes down to is that I have very little inspiration left.

So now I generally fill any creative writing desire (along with satisfactions of other kinds) with the type of editing I have been doing recently - working with an author to improve a text. But unexpectedly, having been asked to write a review of the text as a whole I found myself plunged into the musings of what writing is all about. The whole process (to a certain extent) came back at me and I found myself asking myself the same questions I have been asked as to why I haven't been writing more.

At just this point in time I was loaned a book written by Fay Weldon called Letters to Alice, on first reading Jane Austen in which Fay writes to a (fictional) niece who is an aspiring writer. The book is a blend of a lovely critique of Austen and of sage, and occasionally off-beat, advice on what it is like to be a writer. This book came to me at the exact time when what she had to say fit perfectly both with what I was hoping to articulate in my review and with what I needed to hear personally.

I still do not know if I shall ever take up my pen to attempt to compose literature (I find that Fay expressed my position better than I could with the simple phrase: "the paralysis of the over-literate") but I now have the urge to work on that side of my creativity more so it's a start. And I have plans on sharing some of my favourite quotes from the book here in the near future so it will not all be in vain in any case. I shall leave you at this point with one of the quotes that should give me a certain amount of comfort: "Fiction is much safer than non-fiction. You can be accused of being boring, but seldom of being wrong."

Orange and Blue

Moments of gentleness

Logan had been sitting on the couch with Rabbity (my old stuffed rabbit) for quite a while this morning. I went near to see what he was doing and discovered him alternately knocking Rabbity down so she would bump her head (usually accompanied with giggles) and then picking her up and kissing her head where it hurt. I certainly have a boy on my hands but am so thankful that for the most part his exuberance it tempered pretty well with gentleness...

Last night was the first time he consistently has been able to ask 'please' when he would like something. It's nice that he's so eager (so far) to use this new word. Even when he forgets and I have to prompt him he responds with a grin, the cutest 'pees', and usually claps his hands at himself afterwards. Oh, if this would only be our attitude more often!