November has come and with it time for contemplation. Nature is running wild at the moment, what with blackberries and apple and plum blossoming, but make no mistake, winter is on the way. I rode out to the grocery store to get some goods, and I decided to make the most of the fine weather having my lunch atop a hill rather than in some stinking living room. So I rode to the top of the Harkortberg near Wetter. There I rested and basked in the sun, hungry for the last iota of warmth. Soon ice will cover the trails. Forage will be little to nothing, and snow will fall. Maybe I will ride, maybe not. Maybe I will get fat over the winter, maybe I will go hungry. But time will go on without my saying so.
It is another year that´s dying, and nature dies with it. The light shines with a tired intensity, enchanting the colours of some waning leaves still left on the trees to fairy gold. Just as it has been all the years of this life. I was young once, and stooooopid, and a part of me will always be this way, but another part of me has always been very, very old, and tired, too. Just like this part of myself, autumn has a tired air to it. I feel that all is said and done in autumn, all the harvest is brought in, all dreams fulfilled or calmed off. Old age might be similar to autumn, but that old I am not yet;-). Yes, I am still hungry for this life. The real life, not the one the lords of our world want to sell to us. A life,
where there is still a place for winter, for spring, for summer and autumn, too. Not a grey and featureless existence in the name of God Mammon, worshipped by all. In this, I want my autumn, and I want winter, too. I want death, for I want life, and I really want it. Death is just a part of the package, and that´s only fair. Death is necessary for life being great, being lovely and joyful. No death, no life, it is as simple as that. Nature Herself goes to sleep. Raven and crows are flying now, gone are goose and crane and all the songbirds twittering and singing along. The woods get calm, and this calm is a solemn one, like the slow breath of an old and wise woman on the last, sad height. Her grandchildren have children themselves, all grown up, all the harvest is brought in. Around her bed her family gathers; trees and earth and wind and water, and the fire, too. Slowly she breathes, in and out, and when her last breath is done, that wind will rise on a wicked winter wind. The sun will go down for the unfathomed light... and when the year is at its darkest, the light will be born again. And from the bosom of darkness, when there is no hope left, the virgin maiden will rise again and plait flowers into her hair, and spring will come. It is the way it has always been. It does not matter what names we call it. The seasons flow into each other like the tides, and our life flows older with them.
Older have I grown to write these words. I have made many mistakes in my life, and maybe have done some good, too, but that´s not mine to claim. It does not matter at all what names I have, what words I choose, how strong or beautiful I might be, how wealthy or proud I am. All I have to do is love the tide, love the virgin, the mother and the hag. Even the raven, maybe. For all is just a part of the Law of the Universe, the soul behind all words and names. It cannot be described, or better yet, the description of the sign never will be significant; therefore poetry and art is made possible in the first. Therefore creativity exists, and hence creation. I am therefore obliged to love the Soul of the Universe, that being beyond all description, beyond space and time, life and death, the light and the darkness, the being and the void.
Winter may come. Grey may come, too. But there is no victory over this. No human religion can ever fathom this, no human science explain it to death. It is not that one shalt not make an image of the deity, it is that one cannot.
I have the notion it will be a hard winter, and a hard time for the world might come, too. War, and hate, and greed, and violence, as it has been in all the aeons man has lived and fought through. But I want to never forget what light I was given only but recently, when all my hope seemed to have vanished. This time of year always sees me in melancholy and contemplation, and that is a good thing. For it teaches me the ebb and flow of the tides of time, and I now know that the light will never die completely. No matter how much preachers of hate might preach the ways of power over each other, the soul of the universe will not be affected.
So it´s not that important what I write or write not, if I will get fat over winter or stay hungry, if it will get cold or even grey, how much snow will fall and whatnot.
Have a good wintertime and never forget - hope is never far, even in a fix.
