I've read books, stories, essays in which someone's life seems to occur in time with the changing seasons. In fiction, I've always seen it as a variant of the pathetic fallacy; in non-fiction, as either grandiose imagining, or else massaging the truth for a better story.

I guess I'll have to rethink that attitude, because it's happening to me.

With the coming of autumn, I sank down into a dark night of the soul, found myself knee deep in the Underworld with no choice but to trudge onward. And I trudged on through the winter. I slogged through the quagmire of self-doubt, the murky depths of pain, until I found myself staring at my own raw fears -- that I am destined to be disappointed, miserable, constrained, trapped, and yoked blindly to a path I would never willingly chose. (Also, drowned in melodramatic metaphors and grandiose phrases, but that comes with the territory).

But things are changing. Lessons that have been repeated since fall -- that I need to let go my fears and embrace the passionate exuberance of life -- are finally sinking in. Revelations and discoveries and fortuitous books* are all spiraling together to call me to myself. And something is in the air. A new smell, a fresh breeze, a lightening of life that I can feel with every breath. That surge of potential beneath my feet, struggling to come out. I can feel it everywhere. After nearly suffocating in the darkness, even this small light is freeing. I can feel the pulse of rebirth echoing my own, and I can't stop smiling!

*Refuse to Choose! A revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love, by Barbara Sher, thanks to Magical Musings for mentioning it a few weeks ago!

* * * * *

This season always reminds me of the following poem, and it ties in with how I'm feeling today -- that the world is full of a million different things that I can dive into, that my life is full of potential - so I thought I would include it. My apologies if the spacing gets messed up.

In Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

-e.e. cummings