The year of eight months

This year, we didn't seem to have a May and a June.

I kept trying to put my winter coat away, then having to retrieve it.

Summer hit in July, and our usual yearly drought started about the middle of that month, and continued on, and September and October were subsumed into a three-month August.

Yesterday evening, it felt like autumn for the first time this year.  I needed a jacket, and looking west, saw the grey clouds swirling with the lemon-yellow light in a sky that finally looked seasonal.

This morning, I walked out with a furled umbrella under an expectant pewter-coloured canopy, but it was only after my early coffee shop visit, when I turned my toes in the direction of my mother's home, that I caught the first faint sounds: the crackling hiss of drops hitting the dry leaves in the trees and the dead ones on the sidewalk.

When I walked home after setting up Demeter's breakfast, the pavement was dark wet, and starbursts of fall burst left and right of my path.

In the evening, there were pockets of puddles, not seen for months.

We'll get tired of it soon enough, even after being cheated of a proper October.  Funny how long the year has seemed, with so few months in it.

 

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.