And yet, the shift is there. Two weeks ago, the sun still felt warm and high in the sky at 6.30pm. Since last week, I've been aware that I've been rushing and wrangling the family to get out of the dusk by 6.30pm (*points to mosquitoes - or as Aussies would say, mozzies - with baleful side-eye*).
This (obviously) happens every year, but I suppose I'm noting it here, because it's not often I actually feel like I'm catching that moment of change. The moment when the seasons stretch their arms, merge in a hug and the world strolls imperceptibly from summer into autumn.
Or maybe we do notice it - in the way we're aware of the backdrop of things, but without really paying attention to them.
I can say I've been vaguely aware that the heat and humidity characteristic of south-eastern Queensland summers has lately been retreating at night. In full summer, it doesn't go anywhere. It just sticks around - literally - like a heavy blanket. But now, I realise, the nights are growing crisp and cooling. Similarly, the morning sun is peeping into the kitchen window at different angles and times. I adjust LittleOne's high chair and Indi's bed to dance around the full beams.
My magic tree in the garden, the poinciana, has perhaps one red flower left. It feels like the flowering poinciana season is quite short. The magnificent childhood one that lived across the road from us, with its clouds and clouds of bright pink flowers, seemed to be forever in flower when I was a child. But I suppose time is elastic like that in our memories. A cyclone took it down decades ago, but I still remember it with joy and I wish I'd gotten at least one photo of it. But for now, I am privileged to have a magic red-flower poinciana that I hope might be a beautiful backdrop in my LittleOne's memories. But even without flowers, the poinciana is now sharing a magnificent display of multi-hued cascading greens, peridot to emerald, which flow towards the ground like a peacock tail. Soon it will start dropping little twigs and branches that LittleOne and I will collect as magic wands.
But then, some other things don't change. The butterflies - lime green and black-and-sky-blue and white flutter - merrily across in their characteristically choppy lines of flight. The birds are regulars too - 2-3 ibis birds next door, in the street and sometimes on the roof, what we call the punk pigeons, the incredibly-bossy indigenous mynah birds, the blue-eyed honeyeaters which seem to always fly in pairs and which are the first birds I ever saw in the magic poinciana tree, the little magpie larks (which look like smaller magpies), the delightfully noisy lorikeet parrots, and the bright, brash, loud and beautiful song of the butcher birds. And the bees, who roam the dandelion tops every morning, and the moths who hide in the little weed flowers and who daintily dart away as our big human steps walk through.
Et plus ca change, et plus ca ne change pas.
I think this sometimes when I'm frustrated with the big state of the world. But it's nice to realise it has its good side too, that the earth has its own rhythms. Beyond the surface. Regardless of the machinations and meanings we surface-dwellers fight over, literally, on the surface.
Du fond du coeur
ReeD
Mosquitoes are definitely bastards and though this happens every year, I still find it curious how things shift both slowly and quickly. I like the rhythms of the earth but realize I like transitions more than being deep in any season. When you’re granted those small moments when you not only notice but are a part of the change.
ReplyDeleteIt's that funny contradiction where the changes happen slow and fast at the same time. And if life is rushing you along, you blink and you miss it. It's almost a game of trying to pin down the quintessential moment of change when there isn't a single one - just lots and lots of little ones.
Delete