Change

There's a silver birch tree just outside my window that I've been watching all year.*

For most of the year, it's looked much the same to me. Everything changed so gradually in the spring, and I forgot that it was once bare and white. It was green and unremarkable all summer long.

Suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, it burst into a blaze of triumphant, glorious yellow.

I'm currently having to spend a lot of time in bed because of not-so-great health, but I keep having to drag myself into the office to look out of the window at this tree, because it's just so perfect. It will burn out in a moment, but right now it's spectacular.

Everything changes.

I love autumn. Change is dramatic. Winter is nothing like this - it's slow and hard and feels like it lasts an eternity. But autumn is fire and wind and change.

Just for a moment.

*Not a picture of the silver birch. This is a tree (whose species I am unsure of**) in a nearby park. I could not get a good picture through the window.

**I'm still learning the trees. Give me time. :D

My Sooper Seekrit Other Blog

Because my blogging here is appallingly sporadic, I've started making some of my posts public over at my 'other' blog. The point of starting a blog at Dreamwidth was to be able to friends-lock posts that were about more personal or less 'finished' spiritual stuff, so that I could write about it for a smaller audience (not that this blog has a big audience, but, you know). I have a problem: I want all my posts here to be absolutely perfect. Which is why I should really learn not to promise any kind of series of posts. I've been working on the second part of my Ireland blog for about two months now. One day I might feel like it's good enough to post. Or not.

Anyway, today over at Room Full of Doors, I've been thinking about my beginning attempts to use tarot for academic writing (marvel at how I do not talk about this on my academic twitter account!), inspired by Ali Leigh Lilly's post on using tarot for writing fiction. But mostly, you should read her post. It has made me start to think about writing - even dull, structured academic writing - in a more symbolic way. And when you find writing as hard as I do, that can't hurt.

I won't be posting here every time I do a public post at Dreamwidth, as it would all get a bit cluttered, but the link is up in the corner here in case you're interested in what I'm writing there. If you have a DW account, 'friend' me there!