River to River

I went to a brunch yesterday at a friend's house in Jersey City, New Jersey. Bridge and tunnel comments aside, it was so easy to travel there, crossing the East River by subway to lower Manhattan, and then 2 stops on the Path train under the Hudson River from the World Trade Center.

Part of my journey was seeing the enormous gap and rebuild happening where the Twin Towers once stood. Nine years ago I was working in Soho and still remember the electrical smell in the air that lasted through the fall, as the fires burned until Thanksgiving.

A friend had commented that Autumn is New York is like 4 months of Northern California, without the mountain lions! For me, though it says October on the calendar, the freshness in the air coupled with bright blue skies and sunshine somehow makes the slant of earth feel like we're seeing new buds of spring (my favorite season), not fall.

Earlier in the weekend my yoga teacher had been discussing fall, and how it is her favorite season, and the symbolism of all the seasons. While 'spring' and 'fall' truly show change, fall is about the letting go of what no longer serves you, essentially blessing it and letting it die back to the earth, and then after the period of winter, experiencing rebirth of the new. She talked about the trees in central park, when some of the leaves don't fall to the earth in a golden carpet but remain on the trees, dried up and crumbly long after they should.

Surrender and letting go and flowing with the inevitability of change...a constant theme in yoga, and all spiritual and religious teachings...though no one ever said it was easy!

It was interesting to observe the NY to NJ travelers hurrying to and from the Path train entrance, barely glancing up to look at the big gap in the blue sky. Me and a handful of tourists stood there for a while, on 10-10-10, enjoying the still life and poetic symbolism of construction and new beginnings out of the ashes of the old.