Often I stop with his words on my mind

On All Saints' Day, the trees are raining leaves like heaven raining souls.

I'm striding up Cook Street, wearing my packsack, so my hands are free, and the leaves are swooping in my direction.  I catch two, and make wishes for my daughters.

When I did this in Ottawa, there were also wishes for myself, but they mostly involved returning to Victoria, and here I am, so I make carefully generic wishes for my girls.  Best not to get too specific with wishes made for others.

I've been watching films about Oscar Wilde lately, and both featured a quote from Lady Windermere's Fan (1892, Act Three):  "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

This morning, I feel a brief November chill in my heart, but only time will tell.

Speaking of leaves and souls:

Fèy o, sove lavi mwen Nan mizè mwen ye wo
Fèy o, sove lavi mwen Nan mizè mwen ye wo
Pitit mwen malad Mwen kouri kay gangan, Simido
Pitit mwen malad Mwen kouri kay gangan
Si w bon gangan, sove lavi mwen
Nan mizè mwen ye wo Oh!

Willie works as the garden man;
He plants trees, he burns leaves,
He makes money for himself.
Often I stop with his words on my mind.
Do spacemen pass dead souls on their way to the moon?

(The lyrics of "Feuilles-oh" are in a Haitian Creole, and translate something like this:
Leaves, heal me from my pain Oh!
My child is sick I’m rushing to the voodoo priest’s, Simido
If he is a good healer, he will heal my pain)

The isle is full of noises

With the coming of September, we get odd cloud formations, catching strange shadows. I look out the window and see green and grey, with splashes of gold, which are either patches of sunlight, or the first of the yellow leaves. I think back to the earlier part of the summer, when I was locked out of this blog, but free to walk out. Two beautiful outdoor art experiences come to mind.

One is from a rare rainy evening in early July, before St Swithin swept the showers away. We watched The Tempest on the grounds of Camosun College, under a mushroom cap of grey clouds, as the Garry Oaks swayed and rustled, giving atmosphere to Prospera's (yes, a woman playing a woman) spells, and to the tempest itself, which opens Shakespeare's play.

Caliban crawled across the ground, a cross between a jackal and a spider, then racoon-like, bellied under the low platformed stage and didst painfully remain there for a good ten to fifteen minutes.

A young deer wandered across the lawn behind the actors, and clambered up the volcanic rock into the brush.

I felt six raindrops, but no more. As the sun, visible only on the edges of the mushroom cap, sank in the north-west, a handkerchief chunk of broad rainbow hung on the southern horizon at intermission.

The next day, we headed down to the Cameron Bandshell in Beacon Hill Park to hear Dixie jazz -- but got The Choir and The Chorus instead, two non-auditioned singing groups under the same director. They sang Sarah Harmer, Radiohead, and a host of Indie Rock songs -- adapted for choir -- including one of my favourites, "Walking on Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox.

As the music hummed and soared, a shower of tiny golden leaves drifted over the audience. I looked down and saw two in the crooks of my arms, so took them in my fingers and made wishes for my daughters.

Above our heads, dragonflies zoomed like tiny Sopwith Camels.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

Blink and you'll miss it

I was on my way to the coffee shop this morning and stopped short of the driveway. For the very first time, I saw the leave-buds starting to open.

This is a terrifyingly quick process in Hades. Once the leaves start bursting forth, the bare branches are liable to vanish by the end of the week, so I ran back into the house, grabbed my camera and set it on manual mode.

I ran back in, replaced my camera on the desk, re-alarmed the house, and set off for the coffee shop. I was wearing a warmish top, but no jacket. It was 5 degrees Celsius at 9 am, and even though I avoided the shade, my fingers began to sting a little.

The coffee shop staff had anticipated this.

Note the pale green of the grass. It was khaki a couple of days ago. Two days hence, it will likely be a poisonous green, and our brief spring will be over.

Unless it snows again.

Phantom leaves

I took this picture on November 4th, 2012. It's the sidewalk behind Rideau Hall, along Lisgar Road, what was left after that autumn's leaves had been swept away.

Catch a falling star leaf

Are all superstitions delusions or proof of impossibly magical thinking? I think superstitions can be useful metaphors. Take lucky pennies (and I do, at every opportunity). I found five last weekend, and I saw them because I was not rushing, I happened to look down, and I was willing to stoop to scoop them up. The Resident Fan Boy is fond of saying that luck is preparation plus opportunity. A lucky penny illustrates that nicely. If I'm with someone, I hand it to them, saying: Find a penny, give it away; have good luck for the rest of the day. That's not magical thinking; that's a reminder.

So every autumn, I try to catch falling leaves. It's actually devilishly difficult. If the wind is high, they whoosh above my head. If the wind is low, there are few leaves that appear to drift lazily down, but dip and slip off in a random directions even as I reach. Others fall in scores just where I'm not standing. See, I read in a book in the school library that every leaf caught while falling is good for a wish. I aim for six leaves each year, three leaves per the two most desperate desires from my own personal Mirror of Erised. (Check Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets if you don't catch that reference. That J.K. Rowling knows some dark truths about the human psyche.)

Thus, every tree becomes a tree of dreams: fiery ones, crimson and scarlet ones


and golden ones.

And what prevents me from catching leaves? Sometimes someone is approaching me and I feel too self-conscious, sometimes I simply don't have the speed or agility, sometimes I don't want to trespass or get run over, sometimes my arms are full, and sometimes a child is holding my hand. See? It is a metaphor...

This morning, I made the time to catch leaves, but I always seemed to be standing in the wrong place. As I made my way down the hill, a gust blew a shower of them across the street, and I swept my arms towards my chest, looked down and two golden maple leafs were clutched to my left collarbone. I kissed each and made my wishes, tucking them in my breast pocket. A few minutes later, an ash leaf sailed by and I simply reached out and snatched it from the air. This brings my total to four because last week when I was taking most of these pictures (in fact, it was while I was taking this very picture), a leaf swooped down and landed on my left shoulder. I tell you, my friends, in all my years of leaf-catching and wish-snatching, that has never happened before. Nor is likely to happen again.

Oh, and as for my Mirror of Erised wishes? They may be on their way, but no signs yet. And if I tell you what they are, everyone knows they'll never come true. (No, nothing to do with David Tennant...)