Love the trees until their leaves fall off then encourage them to try again next year.

Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling and theyre falling liketheyre falling in love with the ground.

The Fall will always be yours and mine

We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the beautiful poetic and absurd. We find in all these records of the past philosophies and dreams and efforts stained with tears of great and tender souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death to answer the eternal questions of the Whence and Whither and vainly sought to make with bits of shattered glass a mirror that would in very truth reflect the face and form of Natures perfect self.These myths were born of hopes and fears and tears and smiles and they were touched and colored by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy dawn of birth and deaths sad night. They clothed even the stars with passion and gave to gods the faults and frailties of the sons of men. In them the winds and waves were music and all the lakes and streams and springsthe mountains woods and perfumed dells were haunted by a thousand fairy forms. They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire made tawny Summers billowed breast the throne and home of love filled Autumns arms with sun-kissed grapes and gathered sheaves and pictured Winter as a weak old king who felt like Lear upon his withered face Cordelias tears. These myths though false are beautiful and have for many ages and in countless ways enriched the heart and kindled thought. But if the world were taught that all these things are true and all inspired of God and that eternal punishment will be the lot of him who dares deny or doubt the sweetest myth of all the Fable World would lose its beauty and become a scorned and hateful thing to every brave and thoughtful man.

Her eyes were of different colors the left as brown as autumn the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old or thereabouts her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God it seemed had withheld that possibility as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touchedby genius by madness by the Devil or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever. p.33