Uplifting

            The sun came up this morning. (Ah, Dear Reader, so I have stated the bleeding obvious but please, please, give me a chance and bear with me a mite longer.) It rose in the East. (Yep, I know, it’s getting worse!). I was driving back along the highway in West Vancouver today when a magnificent red sky signaled the Fall dawn. It was one of three or four instances that have occurred over the last few  days which have served to raise my spirits.(They are rarely down.) One other was the plethora of green which has been the result of recent heavy rain. Green thick lengthy grass has grown alongside many of the paths along which I regularly walk. So much so that the council has been moved to come along with their tractor mowers and trim the verdant growth to a reasonable height. Allied to this the deciduous trees have taken on their Fall colours as they begin their seasonal metamorphosis. Incidentally as I approach my 8^th decade on the planet, I have finally realised that there really are shades of colours, not simply those in the spectrum. Red can be crimson, maroon, cherry, brown can be russet, yellow can be, well, different sorts of yellow. It really takes an artist’s eye to pinpoint the subtlety of the differences. But, Dear Reader, whatever the colour, I have always been able to recognise the beauty of this season. If the dawns and twilights are ‘ensanguining the skies’ as A.E. Housman would have it in his poem “How clear, how lovely bright”, then he hit this morning’s nail slap bang on the head. If John Keats describes Fall as the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ in his ‘Ode to Autumn’ then I have to bow to his poetic magnificence. Indeed revisiting these poems as I just have has further enhanced my feelings of uplift.

         And yet, colours of climate and season, have dovetailed nicely into other aspects of my being. I watch a great deal of rugby on the television and have seen some wonderful games over the last year or so, most of them played in empty stadia. But last weekend’s English Premiership games brought a more joyous pleasure to my viewing. Why? Quite simply, because the crowds are back and, as a result, the experience has become whole again. Maybe it is just me, but it seems harder for the players to manufacture their game faces now that they are again sharing their matches with live spectators. They seem determined to wipe the smiles off their faces, to mask their happy feelings with aggressive, intimidating professionalism. To my watchful eye, they fail miserably. They grin hopelessly, they accept refereeing decisions with acquiescent nods, even when they go against them, they banter with the opposition and officials. And when they score, they share their joy with the throngs of supporters. Such events which have for so long depressingly echoed around empty stands no longer do so. And, I, who watch from thousands of miles away, feel strangely a part of the occasion with my own inner cheering, my solitary smile, my unobserved fist pump.

           OK, Dear Reader, it would be all too pretentious to intellectualise this mood and slot it into Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity where events lack a causal connection but somehow appear linked!! I shall not do that. We all have inexplicable moods, days of highs and lows, even, Dear Reader, periods of constant levelness. I could equally have been depressed that the extraordinary dawn was the result of pollution, that the seasonal signs were a reminder that our glorious summer has come to an end and that the crowds at the games are a pandemic risk too soon. But something about me at those magical moments gave me optimism and happiness and a naïve, foolish positive belief in the fact that everything turns out well in the end. Untrue, of course, but I’ll take it!

Thanks for reading.