Day 297

Fall colours in Manchester.

I think I realised something to do with why these turning leaves are so beautiful today, driving past tree after glorious tree, almost causing you to crash from feasting your eyes too long.

A yellow poplar is like the moon on a dark night, flooding the landscape for a few hours. These fall colours are the last hurrah of the trees.  It is a spangled, vibrant, gaudy radiance before the bare drab branches of the long cold.  It is a perfect interpretation of the Dylan Thomas poem: Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  Such beauty.

And driving in the car, seeing all this beauty, and beauty floating also through my ears, listening to a performance by Ya-Fei Chuang of the 24 preludes by Chopin, Opus 28.  I suddenly hear one that I knew how to play, and I am a teenager again, sitting at the piano at number 10 Forest Drive, feeling the notes with my fingers knowing where to go, hearing the music I am making, making vast dramatic sweeping movements with my seated torso and head for expression.  And again it happened, and twice again, four preludes part of my old musical repertoire.

So sad, that we give up musical instruments when they become too hard.  I remember I really worshipped Debussy, and so badly wanted to learn Clair de Lune, but it was just beyond me, all those incredible four-fingered chords, I struggled for many weeks, but eventually gave up and soon thereafter gave up piano lessons altogether because I knew I would never be good enough.  For myself.

A quick sketch begun when I was observing the little soap-opera of the three doves bathing, and finished tonight, also quickly, as I must go to bed in good time in order to get up early to take my husband to the airport, where he has an appointment on a plane flying right across the country.