November. Here it is, and well on its way, too.
I cannot remember another period of time in my life when I have been so abstracted, so unfocussed, so just not there mentally. Things are coming from too many directions. And my reading has been what you might expect: abstracted as well. Ah, well, this too shall pass.
It’s been a great year, all things considered. A nice balance of (mostly) work, and (too infrequent but most enjoyable) play. But the busy-ness shows no sign of abating any time soon. I’m not even looking forward to snow, because the outside projects are due to continue regardless. Our best friends are our big tarps, covering construction projects in between working bouts.
What have I been reading? Nothing too exciting, mostly re-reads. Mamma, by Diana Tutton of Guard Your Daughters fame. Lafcadio Hearn’s The Romance of the Milky Way, from 1905, “studies and stories” from Japan. A whole string of O. Douglas tales. Reginald Arkell’s Old Herbaceous. Most of Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons, until I misplaced it. Monica Dickens – Joy and Josephine (ho-hum) and The Angel in the Corner (better). Ethel Armitage, and a host of other vintage British garden writers, combining pleasure with work, as I plug away updating our plant nursery website’s pages, in preparation for the too-soon-coming nursery year, which gets underway mid-December with the slowest-to-sprout perennials being optimistically seeded and subjected to their various germination-triggering temperature requirements – long warm, long cool, warm-cool-warm, cold-cool, cold-warm, very hot…
So, instead of a book post, here’s a seasonal poem. And not the one you’re thinking it will be, from that misleading post title.
I’ve been worrying away at Rilke in the original German, keeping a volume of his collected works on my bedside table and wishing I had the self-discipline to actually study the language in an organized manner. Maybe next year!
In a slightly uneven English translation, here is one of my favourites, especially that third stanza. November, indeed.
Autumn Day
Lord, it is time. Let the great summer go,
Cast your long shadow on the sundial,
And over harvest fields let the winds blow.
Command to ripen the final fruits;
Grant them two more burning days,
Bring them to fullness, and press
A last sweetness into the heavy wine.
Who has no house, will not build now.
Who now is alone, will remain alone,
Will wake, read, write long letters,
And will the alleys up and down
Walk restlessly, in wind-blown fallen leaves.
Rainer Maria Rilke, circa 1902
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Abend ~ Evening
Leaves & Pages 