Reflection #16

The Gestalt of October

The day dawned, cool and overcast with just a few small splotches of bright blue sky breaking through the gray clouds. I stepped out onto our front porch, the wind blew through the sago palm's leaves and combined with them to whisper a shhhhhhh,  shhhhhhhhh sound, as if the sago was reminding us all to be silent and to enjoy the beauty of listening to nothing but the wind.  And I appreciated the reminder.  With a reverent silence, I started to run.

I jogged through the quiet that one only finds in suburbia early in the morning.  The streets were wet with the remnants of an overnight shower, but the evaporating water left patches of dry that were rapidly expanding as the light grew brighter. The slight chill of winter rode along the wind and I noticed on this mid-october day that many houses were already decorated for Halloween.  

I passed numerous graveyards, some with boney hands reaching toward the sky as if someone had been buried alive.  Skeletons sat on benches cackling evilly, while skulls leered at passersby.  I mused that if aliens landed in suburbia at this time, they would assume humans, or at least, Americans, are a bloodthirsty warrior race that glorifies death and evil.  They would conclude that the large humans were slaves escorting, carrying, and even being used as manual labor to push the tiny carriages of the small, but terrifyingly demanding human leaders.  The little leaders had their slaves decorate their houses with skeletons and corpses, serving as warning, much like a skull and bones flag, for any who would dare cross them.  The small ones roamed the streets on October 31st to demand that the remaining large humans pay their annual tribute….or else.  To such strange lands does the mind of a jogging writer travel.

As I shook off these thoughts with a chuckle, I rounded a corner and saw the sun, sailing toward us, from the east, obscured by the trees, its golden-orange beams, reached out and slathered their bright honeyed light among the wild tree branches, whose arms were raised in supplication to their daily life-giving lord.

 A squirrel collected acorns from a neighbor’s lawn and then scampered across the street, his body forming a long undulating sine wave as he ran.  He stopped for half a second and sat up, as if to look left and right, and then continued his graceful run until he leapt onto a tree and scampered up into the upper branches with agility that even neighborhood tomcats envy.  On the next block, a slightly overweight black and white cat crouched, eyeing a small bird on a boxwood holly, his ancient predator instincts kicking in, even though his owners undoubtedly fed him well.  I ran by and don't know if he caught his bird.  It doesn't matter, most of the fun is the excitement of the hunt anyway.  

The sky was clearing rapidly now, changing from a gray field with a few blue patches to a mostly blue field with a few gray patches. Suddenly, the full sun hit my eyes, in all its triumphant glory and, for the first time in the run, I regretted not wearing my sunglasses.   But a cloud quickly covered the sun again and I ran on through the still-cool air.  

This is how my day began, unique and beautiful, as all days are, in reality, and I cherished this one in my heart, recognizing that, for this day anyway, I noticed.

---