This is usually the time of the year when fall finally breaks summer’s back, taking it out for real, with nights that steal into the 30’s and 40’s and days that struggle to push into the 60’s. This pre-populated post won’t make any predictions as to the current weather conditions, but here’s hoping October has a few more sunny and warm days in her. On with the weekly recap…
Out of the corner of my vision, from the vantage of the dining room window, a little cloud of blue caught my attention, and I knew immediately what had happened. This has been a summer where I was largely absent from the garden, and those times when I did make it our back, my mind wandered, unable to focus, unable to keep an internal journal of what was coming into bloom, what needed to be moved, what required watering, etc. Most summers, I’m out there multiple times a day; a gardener’s greatest weapon against trouble is a watchful eye.
As soon as this little blue cloud appeared, however, I knew what it was. I planted several hydrangea shrubs over twenty years ago in the shaded backyard area where this bloom suddenly beckoned. “Don’t forget me!” it seemed to shout in a little voice. “I’m not done yet!”
No, you beautiful thing, you are far from done. Part of me wanted to weep for having missed the journey to this point – so much fun is in the anticipation, the slow development of the mop-head as it first appears in compact and shriveled form, only to gain in size and shade. Right up until the end, we’re never quite sure what color these will take. Maybe there are still enough iron nails acidifying the soil at its base – whatever the case, this is a brilliant color – the very color that made me rush to get these shrubs into the ground during that first summer at our home.
For years – almost decades actually – they didn’t flower much. The past few summers, however, have found them throwing out a decent number of these gorgeous flower-heads. Patience is a virtue that sometimes finds reward.
It’s National Coming Out Day, and if you’re part of that you have my heartfelt admiration and applause. I’ve done it already (not that we don’t have to keep doing it), but it was so long ago that it doesn’t cross my mind the way it once did. Seems to be less of an issue in the happy circles in which I travel now, though I’m aware it’s worse in other places. (We see you, Florida, and we are still capital G-A-Y.) That said, I’m not feeling very much like fighting back today. Let the young people take the torch and fly, my pretties, fly.
No, I’m feeling a little down thanks to a recent trip excavating photos from the past year for our year-end photo books. Collecting them in one place and seeing the past year unfold again, all that we knew was coming, and all that we didn’t know – it left me with the sadness and ache that losing a loved one leaves in their wake.
And then there’s the news: our own political turmoil, and the burgeoning war in the Middle East. So much wickedness, so much madness, so much blame and death – and it makes our petty problems feel even more petty. It’s an icky place to be, an icky thing to feel.
I move to my meditation space, lowering myself to the ground, feeling the floor beneath me, seeking something solid, something to hold onto or sink into, and there I begin the deep breathing. It takes me through the next twenty minutes, lightening the worry, expanding the plain of peace – that empty place where, if I concentrate and focus and inhabit only this moment of breathing, the emptiness becomes a relief. It helps. It helps a little. I will not ask for more.
Our side yard has become embarrassingly overgrown in the last two years. I meant to get a handle on it this summer, but other events prevented that. Now it is an eyesore and a problem, and I still can’t summon the ambition or drive to do much about it. Surveying it the other day, I noticed we had a stranglehold of bittersweet vine rambling up a pine, so robust that it had gone to seed. This invasive species is a nightmare, popping up anywhere and everywhere, soon entwining itself around whatever crosses its path. It comes with one saving grace: at this time of the year its yellow berries signal the time to cut them if you’d like a fall bouquet or decoration. The thing here is crucial – it must be cut before the berries open, or they will fall apart and to pieces inside.
Once the branches are cut and brought indoors, provided the berries haven’t yet opened, they will open up and reveal this gorgeous orange fruit, which upon closer examination lends it the look of miniature pumpkins. Nature likes to echo her pretty creations, and despite the negative aspects of this vine, this fall I’m taking the pretty and worrying about the mess outside later.
Not all of fall burns with the fiery bombast of 1000 suns – some days are muted and soft, with skies of gray and flowers of subdued form and shade. It’s the best way of transitioning into a winter that is usually bleak and barren – to go from super-saturated flowers and leaves to shades of gray is a cruel fate indeed. Let’s enjoy these days of transition, and look back with this weekly recap.
Perhaps I’ll regret wishing for cooler weather, but right now I could use with a bit of a cool down, global warming be damned. It’s fall, and it should feel like it. While I don’t begrudge anyone their warmer weather preferences, this year I’m longing for the requisite colder weather that puts a sharper jaunt in one’s stroll, pricking the senses with a morning chill, and setting nights up for more comfortable slumber.
This moon appeared the other night, portending the harvest that we’ve already had – I wish to reap no more – and it felt cooling, and calming. The moon doesn’t always do that, and usually the tumult it elicits is internal, which is always worse. This time around, I wrangled its energy, my focus like a lasso around its neck – wherever the moon’s neck might proverbially be – and I set the harness with a vice-like grip, riding this pony into the night, over the river and through the woods on the only path that’s ever taken us through fall.
Despite what the stores would have us think, it is a bit too early to be doing any sort of serious holiday shit, but I previewed this candle in ‘Mulled Cider and Fir’ and it’s a keeper. Carrying just enough fruitiness to signify fall, and only the slightest hint of fir to signal the onslaught of Christmas, it’s a lovely scent to offer the most teasing glimpse of what shouldn’t begin until next month at the earliest.
It set the attic scene for a rainy day of bleak dreariness, when a storm system set up residence for the entirety of a Saturday. A batch of cardamom and cinnamon rolls, from scratch no less, yeast-infections be damned, was in the oven, and the pictured candle was throwing light and pungent fragrance around the place. It made for a cozy picture on a day when coziness felt in short supply.
Somewhere a hidden moon lies in wait, promising to shield the entire sun come next spring. On this night, only a soft chorus of insects and amphibians offers the slightest accompaniment, while in my head this song sounds – piano notes falling like water, dripping with heartache and longing.
The best music makes you so happy that you cry, tears of joy that the body releases while wondering what it’s doing. It is that wonder that unlocks a little bit of the universe, a part that it keeps closed to all but the most sensitive – the small recompense for feeling things a little too keenly, because I’m not sure we’re meant to feel things like that.
…I forgot my shirt at the water’s edge
The moon is low tonight…
Summer ended a while ago. Time moves differently now, time now is numbness. Time is staring blankly into space, unable to focus on anything, as much a deterioration of the eyes as a depletion of any drive or desire to see at all. Darkness and murkiness offer solace beneath the water, and I want so badly for it to be some sort of healing balm that I take their invitation to dive down deeper. Sadness and shadow imbuing everything now, and everything later.
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I’m not sure all these people understand
It’s not like years ago
The fear of getting caught
The recklessness in water
They cannot see me naked
These things they go away
We cannot go back, we cannot go back, we cannot go back. How terrifying that it must be so, to only move forward, how trapping and tricking and troubling it feels. A human like an animal, yet thinking we feel and know so much more than we ever do. A human trying to return to childhood – vain, impossible mission – stupid, wasteful hope. We cannot go back. We cannot go back. We cannot go back.
Chanted like a mantra – cadence of sound, repetition of madness – set it to music, set it to fire, set it to rain and hell and the fuzzy mind of a person caught underwater, life snuffed out in quick mortal panic.
Nightswimming…
…remembering that night…
One night in a summer almost forgotten a girl took my hand, led me into a bit of the woods, wanting me to touch her heart, wanting me to feel something I could never feel. We looked out at a dark river that barely distinguished itself from the night, danger and peril and the stirrings of love – all escaping my notice or care. Cold too, if we had been close enough to pull at its ripples, if we’d been that brave.
One night in a winter barely remembered a boy let my hand fall from his for the last time. Walking away from a life I thought we’d share, taking a different path from mine, the journey suddenly and irrevocably becoming the journeys – what once was one was now two, as it was in the beginning – and then the prayer I’d learned as a child – is now, and ever shall be the world without end.
Our pool season is alway happily longer than our summer season. Andy will open the pool as soon as he detects a stretch of warm days, often in April or early May, and then we’ll keep it open until October, sometimes until there is snow surrounding the pool ladder, bending the grasses gone to seed so that they fall right into the water. It gives us what almost amounts to five months of swimming options – though that’s in theory only, as weather and whim play important parts in how much use a pool gets. As mentioned previously, this year was not a year in which I spent substantial time in the pool, which is somewhat of a sad thing to realize by the end of the season. Some things can’t be helped, and if there is an opportunity for some sort of last-minute reprieve, it’s worth making the attempt.
Still, I felt guilty for trying to go right back into the fun and sun of a summer which had taken such a toll on our family. In some strange way, it felt wrong to indulge and enjoy, and though my head understood that should not the case, I wanted to keep this summer as a somber and sacred space of time to honor my Dad.
That said, there was always something somewhat sad about swimming in the fall, and I understood that swimming now would be less of a celebratory jubilee and more of an exercise in closure. I didn’t want the pool to end on such a sadly-open-ended memory – the last time I swam was just as Dad was beginning his final decline. Part of me wanted to keep that as the last time I swam this year. A bigger part of me wanted to give some sort of finality to this pool season, and this summer, so as to not have it hanging over my head the entire winter. Better to break that sorrowful spell now and address what heartache might result before a fall and winter of mourning set in fully.
The weather confirmed the decision, and in the middle of the week I took off a few hours early from work and made my way to the steps of the pool. The sun was just about to drop behind the oaks and pines, but in the shallow end its light and warmth still filled the space. Faded remnants of the feeling of summer resurfaced as I hesitantly descended into the warm water. It felt good against my skin – warm and enveloping and comforting – and I walked deeper into the water. Floating into the deep end, my back felt instantly better, as gravity released some of its hold in my suspended state. The weight of the past summer lifted a little. I looked up at the sun, dappled through the leaves of an oak tree that had existed before I was born, a tree that looked to continue after I was long gone.
A bit of my sadness seeped into the water, but it was ok. No, it was good. It was proof that there could be sorrow and celebration coexisting. It was a way to say goodbye to this summer, and a way to see ahead to the next one.
This summer our pool hasn’t gotten much use. My last time in was mid-July, just before Dad took his final turn, and since then, thanks to a combination of rainy weather and lack of any sort of celebratory reason for taking a dip, I’ve not gone into the water. At first it wasn’t intentional, just a rotten stretch of simply not feeling up for it. Then it became a thing, where I felt almost guilty about indulging in something that once brought me pleasure. Foolish all around, I know, but that’s where my head was at.
Now it’s October. And the days have soared into the 80’s with lots of sun. Andy had heated the pool back up and went in a few times, easing his back and making the most of this throwback to summer. I held back for a bit while I listened for the whispered invitation of the universe, beckoning me to rejoin the living.
My therapist said if I’m having a good day, and it feels right to indulge in fun things again, I should go with it. I realized she was right. There would always be time to grieve, while sunny and warm days in October are rare. And my father had a pool not for himself, as he rarely went in, but for the enjoyment of his family. It would be nice to continue that dream for a while. The next day I went in…
It just barely caught my eye in the brilliance of an early October morning. A slight, barely discernible rustling in the high branches of a pine tree, lending one branch a distinction that set it apart from the others, is what gave it away. One of my few talents is being able to quickly locate when something is out of place – it’s a trick of the Virgo eye, and a bane to the existence of my friends when their hair is awry or they’ve got a piece of bacon on their boob (ok, in that case I didn’t notice right away since I’m gay and boobs don’t attract my attention).
On this morning, I detected the movement of one singular bough, the pinecones dangling at its end bobbing ever so slightly, and hidden in the shadows of the evergreen needles was a large bird of prey. I couldn’t make it out at first, as its back was to me. It seemed to be making a nest and working on something in the upper-echelon of its perch, and as it turned around I could see it bob its head up and down as if eating something. Circle of life, I suppose.
Standing there and capturing some of its motions on camera, my arms ached a bit as it went patiently about devouring its morning meal. A blue jay fluttered by at one point, squawking loudly in some vain effort to chase it away, but the hawk simply ignored it, continuing to enjoy its breakfast. After a while, the hawk stood then took off, flying across the sky to another pine tree nearby, where it was joined by another hawk. Two now perched upon the pine, resplendent and regal in their composure and power beneath the morning sun. What a sight to behold.
Photos and video rarely do these magnificent beauties justice – the perspective is always askew without a frame of reference, but you can feel how enormous they are, and sense their size as they bend boughs that only sway in the strongest gusts of wind. Silently, one takes off again – danger and might gliding through the air – a warning and a reminder to keep one eye on the sky at all times.
The #TinyThreads feature used to be a daily item here, but such nuggets of wisdom are difficult to come by with any regularity. That said, perhaps it’s time to resurrect the category, at least as best as I might muster in these trying times. It breaks the posts up a bit, especially when things get heavy, and with the attention span of everyone dwindling and showing no sign of ever returning, these little jolts of nonsense and whimsy are the perfect amuse-bouche for the rest of your meal here. Eat up, chow down, and be happy – the #TinyThreads resume tomorrow!
For a certain segment of our wayward society, a section which I happily frequent and in which I mostly reside, lines from ‘Mean Girls’ are more significant than scripture. Today is considered ‘Mean Girls Day’ thanks to the opening quote from the movie. Personally, and wholly unsurprisingly, I’m more aligned with Regina George than Cady Heron, or even too-gay-to-function Damian. Regina has provided some of my most commonly used responses. There is no situation where I cannot work, “Whatever, I’m getting cheese fries” into a dismissive way of exiting a conversation. Try it. Happy October 3rd!
October dawned gorgeously, and this week looks to be a glorious one weather-wise. Taking a recommendation from my therapist, I’m going to embrace the good days as they arrive, so let’s have a sunny one, inside and out. On with the weekly recap…
