Autumn and Fall.
The gray broke today while I was teaching class in the theater; I walked into the first available room with windows and noticed sunshine, noticed clear blue skies, and it no longer mattered if it was cold outside. I will tolerate unpleasant temperatures for beauty. It’s not winter on its own that fills me with self-destruction, my suicide does not simply roll in on storm clouds. But my tolerance for the gray seems to dwindle each year.
I’m trying to teach myself to watch the trees right now instead of the sky. Mine is a temperament of limits and boundaries. I constantly keep myself aware of where mine are just in case I might need to one day break them. So I keep my eyes focused long, on the horizon and the atmosphere, and when I fail to travel there I view the entirety of my life as disappointment.
But there are leaves the color of sleepwalking fire on the trees, on the earth, inches away. And I should remember that even when I do not touch the sky the space in my immediate area is also full of life and wonder.
Last night I performed twice for FEAR and once for Too Much Light, on an evening that The Man Who Was Thursday played to a packed and enthusiastic house, after a week of (mostly) spectacular reviews, a Jeff Recommendation, and a hearty discussion about the production on Chicago Public Radio’s 848.
I prefer the word autumn to fall. I prefer the season of autumn to that of fall. I didn’t realize that I had a distinction until earlier today, when the doldrums and weeping oxygen of fall gave way to the crisp denouement of autumn.
To me. Fall is the action of the trees dying for the year. Autumn is the magnum opus that those trees perform, the last grand action, the crowning achievement.
Any world, any tree, any human being, can fall. It takes determination and a deliberate choice, to be autumn.
I have spent forever being fall. I would like to be autumn.
Creative Control 