Summer. Fall. The names of the seasons describe a cluster of symptoms but the symptoms overlap. I can still hear the buzz of summer cicadas, and see mosquitoes bouncing their noses off the window screens, trying to get inside the house. At the same time, I hear the delicate and varied trilling of crickets, and down in the paddies see the green rice plants bow brown heads heavy with ripening grain.
Half the paddies are already harvested, and the sheaves hang upside down along long poles set up in the stubbled fields. In the first fields to be harvested, the stubble is already sprouting new green shoots. The long-legged, long-bodied black and yellow autumn spiders have started to take residence on great webs spun between hedges and under the eaves of the house. Soon walking (and cycling) into sticky webs will be a daily occurrence.
The green yellow brown palette of the countryside is splashed with red: spider lilies blooming in clumps on the banks of the rice paddies, on the floor of woods and orchards, and in the neighborhood graveyards. The English name describes the delicate crimson filigreed flowers of these leafless plants that are the size of daffodils and of the same family. The Japanese name higanbana--equinox flower--speaks of when they bloom.
Last Sunday was the autumn equinox. Like spring equinox, it's a holiday in Japan, and a day to visit the family grave. Glutenous rice and sweet bean confections dusted with bean powder or ground black sesame are a treat for the occasion.
Most of the summer heat has gone. Persimmons hanging hard and unripe on the trees have the first blush of orange. On other trees, spiky green husks split, showing brown chestnuts inside. Seasonal symptoms blink off and on like stars in a firmament. Each alone is of little consequence but taken together they paint the season across our lives.
--Julian
Comments