THREE CONTEMPLATIONS

They are the kind of trees that can’t be ignored.  You know the ones.

So unnaturally beautiful that I just have to take a picture, except that I can’t, because in a picture it’s just another red tree.  To see it through the window of the car you would think it was a miracle, just such a perfect color as you never find in the crayon box, even if it has more than sixty, even if it is a mighty box with a hundred different flavors of perfectly-sharpened drawing potential.  It would be a hideous color for a shirt.  It would be a fiery blur through the camera lens.  But when it is staring at me from across the street, it is something impossible. It is absorbing.  No living thing will ever die a more brilliant death.

______________________

It is the kind of thing you can hardly even ask about, because it is too normal for comment around here.  I did some independent research and as far as I can tell, the tradition is about seventy years running.  How it has survived while the rest of the country celebrates a holiday with an entirely different name is somewhat mysterious to me, but who am I to ask questions?

The facts are these: October thirtieth is Beggars’ Night, when children travel the streets in costume, stopping at every door for candy.  Most of them have a riddle to tell; in some cases they won’t get candy without it.  The night following is October thirty-first, unremarkable and uncelebrated, no more interesting than the day after Valentine’s Day, and with similar effects: candy to be consumed and back to the old grind.

So here I am, a few hundred miles from the world of Halloween.  I won’t be visited by any miniature vampires tonight.  It’s a good thing, too, because there isn’t much candy left, and I’ve been steadily working through what there is.  Think of that – leftovers already, on Halloween!

______________________

When all components of the natural order of things fall into place in exactly the right way, you may find exactly the kind of person who makes sense to you, but everyone understands that this is a rare occurrence.  If I had found a kindred spirit on the other side of the world, I would already have thought it the result of an unlikely chance; that she lives only a few miles away is surely the result of divine planning.

Never before have I found myself driving to meet for the first time a person whom I already knew – really, when does such a thing ever happen?  But we had been corresponding for long enough to know each other in the way that only two word-workers could.  We were both at home on the page, and we understood the same fundamental truths.  We had shared words and we had shared stories; it seemed natural to be sharing conversation across a table, over tea and coffee.

So I say to you, my friend: well met.