Time for gathering swallows to twitter in the skies, and yet all’s not melancholy; there’s a spring in my step even as winter, inevitably, is coming on.
On looking at X-rays of my metatarsal bones the other day, I could see they were misshapen, toeing in as it were, a sign of long use, perhaps of abuse, but then came what to me was the good news; those inward bending bones, I was told, were possibly a sign of athleticism. The linkage was to my doctor’s view not entirely established, but there you were: Agassi has them, Jeter too, so too did Jackie Robinson.
Those bones indicated that for years I’d often been, when in competition, on the balls of my feet, ready to spring forth. Wonderful. I liked that. She liked my Asics sneakers too. “Anima Sana in Corpore Sano.” Or, in my case, “Non Compos Mentis in Corpore Bentis.”
“I’m ready to spring forward even as we’re about to fall back,” I said to Mary on returning home that evening.
My unseasonal sense of well-being may in part have something to do with the Transcendentalists, some of whose writings I’ve been reading lately, people, like Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, whose energy in large part was derived from their affinity with Nature, which was divine in their minds, and which made them feel they were at one with God. What they say makes sense (even though Emerson’s style at times can be dense). They were always moving forward. And given their harmonious view of things, where else could they have possibly lived but in Concord.
My metatarsal bones bend in ward, my thoughts also at times. Think not of the songs of spring, Keats says, “thou [autumn] hast thy music too.”
Melancholy music to be sure, but all the more profound for that, and assuring.