A Moment of Gold

The symbols and signs we see

Nov 26, 2023

“I have to hurry up and write them down before I forget. I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.” ― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

Happy Sunday! I hope you are enjoying a slow morning, a hot cup of something steaming beside you as you sit to read. (Of course, you can read anytime, but I know some of you do, really, share a bit of time on Sunday morning.)

I made an impromptu post earlier this week. If you missed that post, you will find it here.

The words are true for many points in the year. In some ways, these are guiding words for every day.

The next day, I shared this note. (I later deleted it because I felt awkward about it in the “notes” space.) I am reposting it here, where it more properly belongs:

Thank you to those who saw yesterday’s post and commented. I felt I had left the post as an after dinner mint of sorts, assuming many would see it over the long weekend, after the fact, but reflective nonetheless. Even knowing I was casting words into a day that might frown on the intrusion, I hoped I might reach a few people who needed the words. It was almost a surprise to realize people were reading, but a heartwarming surprise.
With a third emergency hospitalization in three months happening the morning before Thanksgiving, hours before what was supposed to have been a healthy discharge, things quickly scattered. As I sat in the stillness that evening, logging out of work and waiting the hours until my son’s train would get in, I reshaped the piece I had written on Thanksgiving and memory (written in days before everything changed again). I reshaped. I shared.
The piece echoes things I have said through the years on the podcast, things I know to be true about being proactive, about making it the day you want or need. It holds simple reminders, and in the comments, readers beautifully responded, restating, mirroring, and understanding. I needed the words, too. Throughout a long day, I found myself thinking and hearing the words, guideposts through the day. Thank you to those who give space to writers. Thank you for reading.

My post today is short. In poking around for prior notes and connections, echoes of gold through the tunnels of the years, I made some interesting discoveries and some surprising ones. I could easily layer and expand today, but I know everyone needs a breath.

As we move into December, I hope you consider trying Illustrate Your Week (or any kind of illustrated journal). There are also extra/separate December prompts posted if you prefer to see a whole month of ideas up front.

We will be a few days into the month when we meet again next weekend. I am thinking I might incorporate a small daily into my illustrated journal…. a small series. If that’s the kind of thing you enjoy, think about it. I will be talking more about December illustrated journaling next week.

Amy

A Glint of Gold

Last week, I parked at the rehab facility for what I thought was the last time. There is free parking in the tiny lot on the weekend. I was grateful to find a spot. As I stopped the car, I could see the familiar terracotta and white of Sutro Tower ahead of me in the distance, standing tall behind and far above all the houses. It was a clear day. Only a few miles away, the tower, always reminiscent of a ship in the sky, looked small. But in this city, it is the truest and most familiar marker for me. It is the “x” on the map.

I took a quick photo capturing the moment, the vista, the vantage, and the scale, knowing, hoping it was the last visit.

I walked around to the other side of the car to get my messenger bag and another bag that held a chicken salad sandwich and three cans of Diet Coke, one for each remaining day. As I rounded the car to open the door, a single ginkgo leaf caught my eye. It was flattened on the ground next to the car. The day had been dry, but something about the gold of the leaf against the dark-and-light graininess of the asphalt made it seem like a moment after rain. It seemed to glow.

A single leaf. I fished my phone out of my jacket pocket to take a photo.

Single gingko leaf on parking lot asphalt — Single ginkgo leaf on parking lot asphalt. A. Cowen

I held that moment, that bit of glimmer, for just a few seconds before noticing, as I walked across the parking lot, that there were ginkgo leaves scattered around on the ground, welled up in piles near the curbs, lots of them. My one, all by itself, had been alone only in that small viewfinder of a moment.

Lots of fallen leaves, but I looked around and didn’t see any ginkgo trees.

I took a little dirt path that cuts diagonally from the parking lot to the upper level buildings. As I reached the end of the path and crossed to a sidewalk, I saw an almost naked tree. The few leaves still clinging told me it was an almost bare ginkgo tree. It was a small and spindly tree. It was beautiful in its barrenness, in its testament to having tried but given up the ghost to the almost imperceptible shift in season.

It was the tree whose leaf I’d seen by the car. I assumed that. It had to be. It made sense. There had been no other ginkgo trees. It was almost bare, and I had seen all the scattered leaves.

If a leaf on the ground is a ginkgo, and the tree is a ginkgo, then the leaf on the ground came from the tree.

We easily make these connections and assumptions. We fill in the gaps. We take the information we have and connect the dots in ways that help us make meaning. The leaf on the ground came from somewhere. Ahhh…. Here it is…. A tree. A beautiful tree that has lost its gold.

Shifting Signs

I was comforted by having seen that ginkgo leaf. (Seeing is important. I could easily have halfway noticed the gold and still not stopped to really look.) It felt like a sign. It felt auspicious. It felt hopeful. It felt like a moment of grace. It felt, somehow, like I wasn’t alone.

On that day, I thought all of those things were true. The ginkgo leaf, so nicely positioned next to the car door, was confirmation, an underscore on the awareness that after many weeks, things were on the right path, the path home.

Signs may be around us at all times, and we just are too caught up to notice.

I checked in. I admired a gallery of art by young people lining the hallway. I paid special attention to the birds and took note of the turtle. These are the markers of this space, the long hallway to the elevator.

I spent the next several hours, and then, as the sun was setting, I headed back out, retracing my steps down, across, over the diagonal path, and to the parking lot. But this time, coming from a different angle, I saw that along the semicircle drive of the three or four buildings, only one of which I’ve ever been in, there are other ginkgos, larger, and still full of leaves.

Crossing the drive to head back down to the parking lot, I saw another small, fledgling ginkgo on the other side of the roadway. I could see the one I’d spotted initially, too, just ahead of me, the one I had assumed had once held the ginkgo leaf I saw by the car.

A single leaf stopped me in my tracks.

A single leaf made me notice an almost bare tree as I went in. There was magic in the moment. Realizing later that ginkgos surround the campus changed my awareness, but it didn’t erase the moment.

That is mine.

That golden moment, that moment of fleeting and tenuous magic, is mine.

Take your symbols where you find them.

“None of the ginkgo's aesthetic qualities are all that different from those of other trees. I could just as easily wax poetic about the beauty of beech trees, or the majesty of ancient sugar pines. But I think that ginkgos are just unusual enough for the occasional human to take notice of them. It's not that any particular tree or breed of dog or varietal or rose is objectively superior to its peers, they just happen to be the creatures that momentarily capture our flickering attention. As soon as humans take open-hearted notice of anything in the natural world, we find reason to love it.” ― Nathanael Johnson, Unseen City: The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness

A Pocketful of Gold

A few random “gold” notes…. I sometimes smile at the way little things appear, unrelated, until they are.

I have been listening to Fairy Tale (Stephen King), and there is, of course, a lot of gold in it.
We played an Exit game this week, Kidnapped in Fortune City, and one of the puzzles involved counting different shaped pieces of gold.
I didn’t finish Spinning Silver, but it comes to mind.
I know in last year’s November gratitude podcasts, there were gold trees…. Not ginkgos, but the color holds.
I always thought ginkgo trees were rare and magical. Only as an adult living where I do now have I come to find ginkgos are fairly common. I still hold on, in my head, to the impression of them as special.
All week, these lines have been in my head, the wrong season, but lines I have always loved, favorites of a professor mine years ago:

“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”
―Robert Frost

Made It?

Thank you for reading. I am grateful. Even in the midst of everything going on, I am here. It matters to me, and I am grateful. I am grateful for those of you helping support my writing, podcast, and art with your subscriptions. I am grateful for those who comment each week here and on the illustrated journal art I share at Instagram.

🎯 There are December prompts available.

🎯 The Week 48 prompts for Illustrate Your Week are posted.

🎯 There are gratitude posts (1, 2, 3, 4).

I always appreciate your comments and knowing what speaks to you and where we find common ground.

Kelly shared this quote last week in the comments:

“But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.” ― Edith Wharton, The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

This week:

What are you most looking forward to in December?
Nutcracker, gnome, or elf?