My Leaf (T.S. Eliot & the Art of the Ephemeral)

As autumn leaves go, it's not much to look at. Small, shriveled, spotted, and dull in color. But it's the only leaf that ever flew right into my hand without me even looking or trying. What happened was I was walking down the sidewalk this morning and suddenly felt a gentle touch on my left palm and I instinctively closed my fingers softly around it. Was it a sign? Well, yes, because if I say it's a sign then it is a sign. That's how it works. 

With that settled, I tried to recall what I was thinking about when the leaf announced its arrival. What I was thinking about was T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and how his theme seems to be the importance of the still point between the past and the future, the fleeting and the eternal. This still point exists and does not exist, like how a pendulum in motion keeps passing through a point of complete equilibrium. He also talks about how our words always fail us in our search for the ultimate reality, though we have no choice but to try to use them to express ourselves as we try. And I was also thinking about how this connected with my essay at On Being about Bob Dylan, and how he rejected the mantle of prophet or spokesman for a generation in favor of a lifetime of songs built on acceptance of the unknowable but committed to speaking about what it's like to be in this world, from every angle possible.