Last Sunday the weather changed. In one fell swoop, the rain had arrived in the night, and with it a cooler atmosphere by about fifteen degrees. A jarring start to a Sunday morning. When I opened the door to the back patio, I just as quickly shut it. Amazing the way a single rainy day can seemingly erase an entire summer of hot and sunny days – as if they’d never happened, as if the spring had returned and we had a chance to start again – as if the dead body of summer didn’t lay between us.
It’s been a while, my friend
Counting days don’t seem to end
I haven’t spoken to my poor mom since I can’t remember when
It’s hard when someone knows just where you’ve been
Orville Peck’s new album ‘Mule’ came out after the concept and plan for this fall’s theme was in place, so I can’t take or give credit for the timing, but it works, and the album is a masterpiece. This cut is especially fitting, titled ‘The Fall’ and perfectly placed to help kick off this season of cowboy grit and drama. A contemplative yearning bleeds across the melody and lyrics – it’s the feeling of fall – a lonesome sort of feeling. This won’t be the last of that phrase or feeling. Fall can crush the soul that way. Fall will crush the soul.
So come around, my dear
Take a rest right here
And I will share your pain, I’ve seen it all
Hot summer nights is where we started
But it’s been cold since when we parted
You used to tell me we’d get through it all
We were flying, how could we have seen the fall?
It’s hard to let go of some summers. Others past relatively uneventfully, forgotten in a cruel way – because summer should never be forgotten. Still others can’t pass quickly enough. This was one of those latter ones – not for any truly traumatic way, just for the way I hid away from its heat and sun and revelation. I ran away from the joy and the moment – spending my final days as a 50-year-old sheltered from the world and the wide sky. Not exactly sure why. Fear of letting go, perhaps.
Still the Hudson flows
Guess that’s just the way it goes
I’ve been checkin’ on the leaves to see if they’ve turned brown and gold
Who made time so slow?
I watch the sun come up
Strangers fill my cup
Empty out the bag, it’s making noise
Run down my heart with many lovers
Hide my head under the covers
The wind is blowing, hear it at the wall
Yeah, all that time we were just laughing through the fall
Fall signals ambivalence now – a mixed bag of feelings and emotions, memories and tricky rabbit holes that lead into the past, only to fuck with the future. Greeting it with a hesitant wariness, the way I’m suspicious of most things in the world now, I implore myself to leave past and future alone, and strive to focus solely on the present. Mindfulness is the surest way of getting through a day as well as a season.
And don’t you ask me how I’ve been
I wore that chain every day, as if it were a ring
And it hurt so bad to see you, so please next time keep walking
As for the rest of you, please don’t ask me to sing
Fall used to mean a new beginning – even more than spring for reasons not fully understood by my small brain. It was the season that marked a resurgence in order and structure after the carefree and loose summer – for a Virgo that was heaven. As much as I hated returning to school, I’ve always relished the opportunity for a new wardrobe, a new image, a new era, a new project. Fall’s cooler nights and crisp mornings were the jolt of inspiration to get my shit in order again if I’d let things fall by the wayside in the summer heat. Now it feels different: the preamble to winter. There is sorrow and an element of danger present – will it be the winter of the seasonal year, or the winter of a lifetime? After the age of fifty, any fall could be the last – and there are fewer falls ahead of me than behind me. I can’t look away from that anymore.
So don’t look down
No, you won’t see the ground
Just a life that passes by you while you float
When a cowboy grows old, anything can happen. Truth is, many cowboys don’t get the chance to grow old – and for those that do, it always feels a bit like a surprise. A nasty, cruel, dangerous surprise – the way a prairie dog hole can trip up a horse, landing rider and animal suddenly on the ground. Hopefully the rider remains on top, because if he or she doesn’t, few survive being beneath a horse without injury or death.
Hot summer nights is where we started
But it’s been cold since when we parted
At The Bowery’s where I heard the angels call
I thought it was the end, then I recalled the fall
I thought it was goodbye, then I recalled the fall.
