For instance, why do winter days spur me to hibernate in the words of Emily Dickinson, to gravitate mentally towards libraries and Dutch meals and the faces of loved ones? What is it about spring that makes me think about sailboats and Mozart and gentle yellow birds? Is it the heat or the relentless monotony of work that drives my imagination off in the summertime, giving my brain very little peace from unadulterated reality?
I love being in my mind most in autumn, when I am very much occupied by skies. In the season of fields leveled and gathered in by the harvest, of streets emptied early while interiors flare with warmth and fragrance, everything seems to withdraw, to turn downward and inward. Some mysterious compass pulls the birds and the leaves south. The same sort of impulse humbles daylight's brash extravagance into ascetic brevity.
Something about all this hunkering and meekness draws my mind up and out, and I become occupied with the skies. They seem sharper when temperatures drop, the light cleaner. During the day the blue is a presence, cutting and distinct--not even the blur of clouds can mask its clarity, but serves instead to define it, like a five o'clock shadow on a pronounced jawline. The holy heights leave us kindled and entranced, glimpsing otherness and glory from the midst of the sauces and dirt and blurred windowlight of a mown earth.
In the fall, my thoughts are capable of detaching themselves sufficiently from the fragrant broth of earthly things and accessing at moments a different perspective. Everything looks beautiful and simple from such a distance, and it is easier to love people for the wonder they are. I rest encircled by that which is afar and holy, which at the same time contains and invites.
Heaven is an autumn mind.
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