The actual equinox was yesterday at 6:54 PM local time. So if you heard people saying that yesterday was the first day of fall, they were only partly correct. But today is the first full day of fall, which means more, I think, than saying that the last 5 hours and 6 minutes of yesterday were fall. It didn't seem right to celebrate, if that's what we do, 17 hours and 54 minutes early. (This post normally goes up automatically at 1:00 AM.) So, I decided to let yesterday be the end of summer, which it was, and today the first day of fall. Though clocks are standard metaphors for time, the universe does not run like round, geared wheels. Nothing travels in an absolute circle, and there are no bells or whistles when the day and the night become for an odd instant equal. Time is a human abstraction. Time composed of units. As Heraclitus said, "You cannot step in the same river twice.” The river is infinitely different from moment to moment. Of course, I could go back and type that differently, but time itself, whatever time turns out to be, moves on with or without the words. So, for what it's worth, happy first day of fall. Now the nights become longer than the days until by the end of a normal day it is already dark and things begin moving forward in reverse. It has nothing to do with calendars. The words of William Blake may sound familiar, but they are seldom understood:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour […]

He was emphasizing thoughts we normally ignore. Hoping we would see what we seldom see. It could very well have been the moment of equinox.

The photograph, as usual, is of the gate at Terry and Cami’s house. If I didn’t have a calendar of my own, I would know the season by its gately decorations. I took this picture at 6:54 last night.