Daisies of Autumn

It’s about that time of the year. The days are getting shorter. It’s cold, but not cold enough to justify a heater or jacket. Sweater weather. But the flowers and trees, the birds, the insects- all at the tail end of the season, getting ready for the long nights ahead. Bees finding the last of the pollen, for sustenance during the barren winter. Flowers, just clinging on, blooming one last time before the year ends. It’s transition season.
It’s not only the plants that are changing. It’s the people too. It seems the nights get longer, but the people, darker. Darkness breeds darkness. People curl inward, become more silent, more sullen. No one takes introspective walks on a sunny spring afternoon. It’s always at night. It’s always dark, it’s always late. When everything seems dead, the blackness surfaces. That’s when you really do have to be careful. When the whispers of the night start making sense. Those ideas start seeming rational. Those desires devour. Slowly, like poison. Like ink, in milk. A drop, a speck. A jot, a trace. A mass, a multitude. Black milk. Ruined in its entirety. Corrupting all that is good, all that is just. A manifestation of itself. You have to wrestle with it. Fight it. The Arabs call it “جهاد النفس” or the struggle against oneself. Literally, the war with oneself. To stop. To remove. To distance. Actively suppress your mind from consuming itself. From tearing itself to pieces. Nip it in the bud. Intercept that inception, and extinguish it. Find that rational side, the side that’s been strangled- suffocated- by the irrational darkness hypnotising you, and tap into it. Rip it wide open. Reach out with both hands and grasp on. Clutch on. Cling on and drag yourself out of that sea of solitude, that sea of darkness. Snap out of that hypnotic trance, and realise- realise how far away you truly are, how distant, in that moment you’ve become unrecognisable, from yourself. Regroup, reset, reassess, reestablish. Consciously find your core, and anchor to it.
Find yourself, but don’t get lost on the way.