Descending Scale

Winter solstice. Our shortest days, long long LONG nights. Less sunlight is thought to produce less serotonin and more melatonin, leading to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) for a few folks. Many of us will mourn the comfort and beauty of summer, lament the severely shrunken luxuriance of local life. Some may be the opposite: encouraged to embrace change we can’t control. “Autumnus” is ancient Latin for the sadly evocative phrase “the falling of the year”. Winter can be grim. “Summer flies and August dies, the world grows dark and mean”, sang Jerry Garcia once. This neighbor of mine wishes there were more acorns, and she will struggle to survive in the fierce snows of February.

Now in late December, when a medley of human holidays briefly distracts us from those lengthy nights in this hemisphere, it may boost our spirits to revisit October. Wasn’t it spectacular! Best in a long time. Then over an all-too-quick span of days vivid yellow morphed into muddy orange, then into the variety of earth tones (burnt sienna, raw umber, dark ochre) that for most people fall under the heading “muddy brown”.

My slope of forest started September in lush green and will close the year’s curtain as dark skeletons, probably surrounded by a cold white carpet. The crescendo of warm October colors, a living slow-motion symphony, was followed by the deepening sense that death is creeping closer all the while. Is that Elgar’s Cello Concerto I hear? Like the trees themselves, my emotions changed daily, and like the Cold Moon of December, they waxed and waned even during the writing of this blog. Am I maybe suffering from a lack of ‘chlorophyll’?

The seasonal moods that segued through my consciousness started with a welcome reinvigoration that came with a cool breeze, that first one that shuts down the stifling late summer. Not just a tease or a threat, but a genuine though ephemeral restart. “The Urge for Going”, Joni Mitchell wrote of it. I’m still here though. Sneakily, it became too late to leave. And inevitably it will turn to what the carol “In The Bleak Midwinter” tells of, skillfully, with its melancholy descending melody,

“snow is falling,

        snow on snow….

                snow

                     on

                          snow.”

Listening to that you can almost feel the wet flakes melting down your neck. Good music always takes me on a journey. Right now, to acceptance and understanding, hopefully serenity. Because it really doesn’t matter how I feel – or how many songs I quote from. Astronomy won’t be denied.

I tell myself, aware of the epoch we’ve created, to try appreciating the cold a bit more…well, maybe. I don’t think I can do the same for the dark though. I also tell myself that as of today, nights will begin getting shorter again…Yes!

George Jacobi