using just my words

i try to take a walk every morning after i write. there is a loop i like to take around the north part of central park, which affords me a pleasant combination of people-watching and nature-observation that i find stimulating and inspiring.

today the wind kept gusting up in random bursts and shaking the leaves loose from the branches overhead. showers of yellow leaves drifted down in shafts of sunlight, like glittering golden coins, but moving more slowly,
like feathers
or molasses
or slow dancing.

it was like magic.

i realize that these are my favorite trees and i draw them often: trees with a few leaves...
perched on the precipice between fullness and hibernation,
introversion and extroversion
summer and winter.

poised in fall, like some glorious rite of passage, vibrant, proud, celebrated.

i didn't have that. responsibility and maturity rounded the corner on me at an early age and i'm just now starting to grieve it. the change. the loss of something. the birth of something else.

"how trite."
the critic in my mind scoffs at such suburban self-therapy speeches. but i don't know if comparison is the way to deal with suffering. although knowing that there are people with worse stories than mine could inspire a sense of gratitude in me, it doesn't change the fact that every human walking this earth suffers. and has hurt. baggage. regret. pain.

and everyone is free to choose how to live with that.

x,
sam