秋の雲は美しいです。

秋の雲は美しいです。

あきのくもはうつくしいです。

Aki no kumo wa utsukushii desu.

Autumn clouds are beautiful.

So, I took this picture a couple of days ago. It is from my window, from my room, from our flat. It is of the trees along my road and the trees in the park near my house and the sky. It’s not necessarily the prettiest or most moving picture I have ever taken, or seen, but I like it.

There is something about the weather in the Autumn, in the Winter, that I find captivating. It all seems rather desolate. The trees crook and bend; their branches arch to the sky as if they are trying to scar the rolling clouds. The sky takes on a dull, ache of a colour and the clouds hang heavy in the sky. It is all at once mundane and epic. Depressing and overwhelming. Ugly and beautiful. When you are walking along the street in the heavy Winter light (as if the Sun is only half awake), and the wind stirs… it twists and turns around you, your hair and scarf dance in the air… that is when I feel alive. In the sweltering Summer heat, it merely feels that I am living.

That is not to say that I do not enjoy the other seasons, I do. The flowers in Spring never cease to bewilder me; flowers are perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world to me. Summer’s long hot days and short warm nights bring out the happiness in people. Winter has a creaking isolation about it, but I find that heart warming. Alas, I digress. My point is that I think Autumn is beautiful, not really the changing colours of the leaves, but it feels like the sky has lulled down to the ground, the wind swirls, the clouds hang that much lower and the Sun hides away. I love it.