Driving While Tripping...

The trippy colors of fall are upon us.

Every year it's the same. I complain bitterly about the fall equinox, all the while marveling at the beauty of sunny fall days, and then disbelieving my eyes when trees, which to my tropical mind should always remain green, start turning bright yellow, orange and red.  

For as long as I can remember around here, this chromatic reversal has happened at the same time that certain species of trees, such as oaks, have turned to the brown that I associate with the horror of winter.  However, for the past two years, the wild colors have come before the brown, coexisting with the green, and giving rise to a short-lived dream that these colors might indeed be permanent without signifying the yearly shutting down of photosynthesis that announces the coming of winter.  In the past few days, the air itself has given the impression of being tinted with yellow, and nothing seems real. 

This year, coincidentally, the LSD colors of fall have peaked on October 31^st, just in time for Halloween: a holiday celebrating the unknown, and a festival with pagan origins to which, just as with Carnaval in Brazil, I don’t feel much of a connection.  Children will come to our door dressed in what they think are scary costumes, and we will give them commercial candy because it is easier and safer than giving them apples; because the kids would hate to get anything else; and because the candy industry has happily reinforced the idea that this is the norm.  And barring a natural or man-made catastrophe, the night will pass on like any other. 

In the morning, leaves will start turning brown, and more and more of them will start falling.  And while nature goes dormant, a season of outdoor chores will be upon us.  ...And I will start counting the days to the solstice.  I was, like every other living thing, indeed born on a specific day, though I feel unable to count years by that date.  It is only during this season, this harbinger of shorter and shorter days to come, of darkness and of death, that I understand the meaning of a year gone by.  It is not a very profound feeling. Happy Birthday nonetheless.