In medias res

As I was saying, then, it was August, and the river meandered with its August pace.

I boarded a train that traveled tracks in orbits. Which is to say I went some distance and gravity pulled me right back to where I started, only in October, and there are golden leaves all over my desk.

I was reading this morning–

[in our Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which, by the way is “compact” only in that the print is so tiny that you need a magnifying glass to read it; also, which we own because back in the late 70s or early 80s, the Book of the Month Club had this amazing offer where, if you signed up for a few months, you could get a free gift, and one choice was the Compact OED, and being the bookish nerd teen that I was, I had to have it. I don’t remember any of the books I bought from the Book of the Month Club, but I’ve lugged the OED to every dorm room, apartment, and house I’ve in lived since then; also, back to the notion of “compact,” let’s just say that I carried it downstairs this morning and it’s heavier than a baby, both cats combined, and most other things I’ve carried around this house; it would not be be one of the objects I toss in my backpack for a weekend writing retreat, but keep in mind that this was back when they printed things on paper, so “compact” is a relative term; also, the process of reading it with a magnifying glass while wearing contact lenses and reading glasses is quite a miracle of optics; I did not need reading glasses when I first owned this dictionary]

–the definition of the word “fallow” (which covers two full columns of tiny-print text) and was for some reason pleased to remember that it is a noun, a verb, and an adjective.

It is the name of the idle, unplanted field itself, and the action of plowing and harrowing the field, and the state of the seemingly barren field, and the pale color of that overturned soil after it’s been in the sun for a day.

It is also the act of becoming pale, of fading, and withering.

It is also a pale, yellowish-brown color. The coat of the Fallow deer. The shade of the fallow leaves.

It is also the color of the unwritten page. Or the state of being inward. Or the quiet mind itself.

It is the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, when the year is examined, when you look inside yourself to see how you’ve strayed and failed, and how you can be better. The still moment where you whisper over the seeds for the coming year before you plant them in that clean, welcoming soil.