Liminal Days of Autumn
秋分 Autumn Equinox
Persimmon kaki jelly, lemon hinoki shaved ice, chestnut kuri Baum Kuchen. In the good company of others, I have had the pleasure of tasting these Japanese sweets full of fall flavor this past week.
As the color of leaves change, Japanese sweets from orange to brown evoke the shifting of seasons.
We are now entering Autumn Equinox (秋分 shunbun) - one of the two moments in the year - when the sun is directly above the equator, making day and night equally long.
Autumn beckons neither the fresh stirrings of Spring nor the bleakest frigid dead air of Winter. A season not of beginnings nor conclusions. But of gentle transitions, knowing all things must turn.
Pico Iyer wrote in his book ‘Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells’:
The main temple in Nara has burned and come back and burned and come back, three times over the centuries; the imperial compound, covering a sixth of all Kyoto, has had to be rebuilt fourteen times. What do we have to hold on to? Only the certainty that nothing will go according to design; our hopes are newly built wooden houses, sturdy until someone drops a cigarette or match.
Autumn is not about the boldness of being the first nor the last. It is the soft lingering whispers of time, memories, mysteries, and the quiet stillness of in-betweens — holding on to what was, what if, and what is to come.
Not Taken - in Pilgrim by David Whyte
The path you did not take,
ran with you for a while,
just the other side of the mountain,
or meandering with you on the far bank
of the onward river you followed;
the sound of its flowing water holding
your respective journeys together,
as if its merciful but distant companionship
could always move with you;
always be with you,
waiting for you to cross over
as you always meant to,
when this path you had followed
had come to an end.
But you never turned to cross,
and you never found a bridge,
and you never took that other way,
and you stayed on this path to the end,
recalling the other way you did not take
as you would a close and loving friend
who had left you not to leave you but simply
to go on with their life, so that you carried
their memory through the years that passed
as you would a beautiful and worthwhile burden,
growing with them as they grew,
walking with them as they walked…
You were in the end,
never just looking on,
but always the river moving between
and the song of the water,
holding the flowing of ways together.
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I’d love to visit Japan in the autumn!
It’s the one season that has eluded me due to my schedule, but the foliage looks absolutely incredible. Looking forward to more shots of Kyoto!