Make no promise.

Fill the heart.

Fill with time

For friends and art.

Fill with hope

In place of fear.

Fill with light

by which to steer.

In view of recent events, I thought I might try and explain the American electoral process for my friends in other countries. But perhaps Mr. Mencken, another scribe from just up the way in Baltimore, does it better:

"I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself - that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it may be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers, tend to be coy. What I can't make out is how any man can believe in democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained when they are debauched and made a show of. How can any man be a democrat who is sincerely a democrat?"

(Read the entire entertaining diatribe here: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/mencken.htm)

I should add that I am not quite so cynical about democracy myself. I still hope for the better, if not the best.

I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to those with knowledge, nor favor to those with skill; but time and chance happen to all.

The leaves are fading fast now, falling in waves and beginning to shower the ground in brown.

The colors are dim this year, I suppose because  the rain was limited. The connection between water and color is a mysterious one, an algorithm I cannot fathom, except to say that just enough, at just the right time, is a condition of brilliance.

But one thing I do appreciate about the leafless trees is the revelation of structure. I have long been fascinated by this, drawn to something elemental in the vision. I wonder why each tree happened to grow in that unique and complex way - what combination of water, wind, heredity and happenstance has led to this specific existential architecture.

 . 

Are any trees identical? Some like aspen are genetically so, since a grove is often really one tree connected at the root level (root suckering it is called). But even so, each aspen sprout seems slightly different, leans left or right, from or to some unknown attractor.

My favorites are the trees at night, dark grey trunks and branches barely revealed against the deeper sky. On a clear night, the stars shine between the branches, as though the leaves have been reincarnated as celestial bodies.

Maybe that's what winter is for, to drop the veneer and let the heaven show through.