#devil winds

Anna Topuriya Devil Winds, 2018

❝Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.❞ –Rumi

This quote feels like Fall to me, and today is the Fall Equinox: day and night are in balance, but that balance will give way to creeping darkness, to leaves that change and crisp and fall, to pumpkin spice and butternut squash and scary stories that pound the heart.

For me personally, it’s also a sorrowful time; my youngest brother and stepdad both died in October, a year apart. Even so, it remains my favorite time of year, maybe because sorrow and mourning are inherently part of Fall too. It is a time of harvest and decay, after all. A time to cull and reap and honor the Dead, to make room for new life that will later bloom when spring comes back around.