Sunset, Monday, 16 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Now we have our second straight day of Indian Summer, with trees half bare and the strange combination of warmth and horizontal sunlight crashing through the woods. In entire fields of blown-out goldenrod, the sun makes blinding coronas behind tall flourishes of white filament. I know there’s no photosynthesis going on, the goldenrod’s dry stalks and curled leaves are dust gray, but I also don’t believe anything is wasted in nature, including this light. I suspect photosynthesis of a different order, in which any light we admit into ourselves, like any degree of light or love we may be able to give, is gathered and grows even beyond our natural lives.