I detected a speculative something in the horizon, with which from the blackish sky backdrop looked like the 11th plague of Egypt. Looking up toward the dark heavens, they portrayed the massive dust particles that were about to crush an unarmed enemy. I looked at them closely and realized that they were actually as yellow as the three-quarter-shaped moon that shone that windy Friday night.I am talking about the leaves of trees blown heavily by the eastern wind. On my way to the office for a late night of work, I stared at the heavens to watch these pseudo imago butterflies fluttering their spiritless, no-cuticle wings. While few enjoyed the slow descent to a temporary kibbutz, others contented themselves with a steady-state, non-flitting aerodynamic lifts. Like butterflies, leaves falling made my eyes narrow with a half-stunned, half-euphoric open-lipped semblance. At one point I stopped and wondered at this wonderful site to behold that nobody around even cared a fig.
Fall has started to manifest its grandeur in every whisk of the breeze and in the clutter of leaves on ground. Last year I wrote how the leaves fell on a couple spending time under the shade of a pale green tree; and how it sprinkled the man's kiss attempts and witnessed the girl's giggles of anticipation. This week, the leaves inspired me not just to write about them again but opened my eyes to few realizations.
Loving each colorful detail of fall, oddments of the past couple of weeks flickered at the fringes of my eyelids. I thought at how I missed to appreciate life in Brookings-those little pinches of beauty that I used to love about the town (squirrels, crickets, flower gardens, jackrabbits, vast fields and gracious people), of which I promised myself to only see. It was a realization that happened when I was on the verge of breaking loose from an experience that only the infuriated ego of an antagonist in a totalitarian society could appreciate. Even George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" would have paled in comparison with my article that carried the anger of The Bride, a.k.a. Beatrix Kiddo of Kill Bill and was supposed to come out in this column had the editors not interfered and cancelled its run. Their efforts were greatly appreciated.
Now, having schooled my thoughts into full comprehension of the likely precipitates of my writings and the touch they may have to my readers, I slithered into my old self again. The self who wrote the columns "Fuchsia in South Dakota," "Falling for a brown-haired American girl at The Union" and the likes, would be evident again. Of course, the squirrels and the leaves, thanks to them, would play their roles once more as they proved to be efficient means of self-approbation.
Just allow me to sweet-talk myself that I am an unbiased, sometimes fruity individual with appetite for absurd beauty, perverted wit and cockamamie details. It is strange though that I haven't killed anyone yet (laugh out loud). Maybe because I don't think about violent stuff on people in those moments of unfriendly howls of vehemence. Rather, I think of my pen, of survival and all the nice details there is to life in Brookings and the society in general. Maybe because there is more to life than entertaining anger. Maybe because there are more colors to appreciate if I just have to look around. Maybe because I simply do not want to miss the beauty whenever I am transformed into a new self.
From now on, I would be whisking the colors of Brookings while I stare at the butterflies, I mean the leaves!
Read this from collegian site.
Labels: Collegian Newspaper
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