In Autumn > IDEAS & IDEALS

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Every autumn around this time of the year, when the sky becomes as deep and blue as the ocean and we can see through it many miles over the mountain ridges, and when the cool wind sweeps over the harvested fields and stirs my hair, then again, without fail, the philosopher in me wakes up and bestirs himself from his lethargy of summer sleep and commences his annual work of crisp meditation.

     The main reason that I experience becoming a philosopher only in autumn every year is, I think, I get less confused by the innumerable green leaves of the lush summer. Autumn provides me with an opportunity to examine the shape and beauty of life from a different angle. With the disappearance of the disturbing muddle of juices, leaves, and noises of summer, the shape of life is very much simplified in autumn. This morning I counted the remaining leaves on the persimmon tree in my back yard. I didn't and couldn't do this in summer simply because there were too many. I counted ten, and thought of Henry David Thoreau. This wise man said in his Walden that an honest man has hardly need more than his ten fingers in order to count something that is really necessary for his good living. Then I thought I could better understand what he meant by that.

     How pleasant it is, indeed, to have fire again! How hysterically we hated and avoided it in summer! At the threshold of summer I had thrown away my Aladin stove, out of my sight, as if I would never see it again. All during the summer it never occurred to me that it was somewhere in the house gathering dust and rust on it in silence, like a deserted lover, waiting to be called and loved again. Yesterday afternoon I took it out of the cardboard box, cleaned the rust and the dust on it with a piece of cloth, and filled the empty tank to the full with kerosene. Putting this beautiful thing in a corner of my room, I felt happy and secure. I even wanted the temperature to drop low so that I could start to burn it right now. Into the big empty box from which I had taken out my stove I put my electric fan which has become suddenly ugly and useless, and put it on the shelf in the storage.

     In autumn we look back and regret that we were too busy in the past summer for no good reasons. We loved and fought, drank hard, talked big and empty words, wept bitterly, and laughed heartily, swaggered and swashbuckled around, ran here and there. We find now we did not take even a good nap after lunch. All of us were driven by work, ambition, and excitement. The sun was hot, and so were we.

    That frantic hour is over. Autumn is here now with us. It is time to stop running, and sit down and be idle without remorse. It is time to cool our sun-burned hands and head under the shade of the lamp, and to sit up in bed late at night with a book. Like a traveller going to bed at night after a long and weary walk in the day, we are entitled to have a real good rest and sleep.

     But unfortunately I can not go to sleep easily as well as quickly at night this autumn. It is partly due to the incessant chirpings of the crickets somewhere under the threshold, and I can not help being serious and alarmed in spite of myself. I feel suddenly I have grown old and realize that I have lived far more than half of my life already. Fully awake in the darkness I feel everything around me looks different from what it looked like, and nature itself is not as natural as it used to be. All the familiar natural phenomena--the coming and going of the migrating birds, the fallen leaves drifting in the wind, the rain that falls on the tin roof, the moon in the sky pursuing its nightly journey, the silent change of the season--all these suddenly become unfamiliar and mysterious to me this fall.

     Usually I dare not challenge or raise questions or seek for answers to the great whys of our creation, of life, or of universe. I am busy enough and satisfied with little whys of my day-to-day living. What I hate most and avoid most is to be serious, because there is no joy in being so. But this autumn, I have to admit, everything turns into a sad topic of serious thinking. I am not, and cannot be a philosopher, nor do I want to be one, either. But I can not avoid being philosophic, even religious at midnight when I am fully awake and sleep won't come.

     In the morning I put on my old hat and jacket and walk out of my house and quicken my steps towards the hilly mountain nearby. I am determined to be light, happy, and cheerful again. On the lonely road in the woods, I find myself keenly responding to the withered grass, to the fallen leaves, and even to the dirt and stones. With the cold wind at my face, I feel my inner being is slowly becoming visible, and anxieties and misgivings within me that had worried me during the night are being conquered one by one.

     I sit on a round and flat rock to take a rest, and find I am carrying various sorts of dried seeds on me. I just marvel and admire at the ingenious devices with which they are sticking on my jacket, my hat, stockings, and even on my shoestrings. They are all quiet travellers like me. I find I am absorbed in thinking of the unknown plans or intentions of the unknown being that has made these seeds travel with me.

     I pull one of the seeds from my sleeve with my first two fingers and fling it in the air. I see it fall into a crevice in the rock on which I am sitting. I realize belatedly that I have done something great that I have never intended. I am thinking of the miraculous transformation this seed will make in the spring next year. I find I am getting serious again against my will, all because I am in autumn.
          (November 26, 1982)