This year is not designed for typical birthdays, but Andy has never enjoyed a big fuss over his big day, so we will continue his preferred quiet celebration when it rolls around in a few weeks. As a tease of that, here he is walking through Southwest Corridor Park on my birthday a few weeks ago.
In keeping with the birthday theme, we will be seeing Elaine for lunch today, for an early birthday gathering on a socially-distanced patio at my parents’ home. Andy will make a birthday cake and we will do our best to celebrate in the only way we can during such strange times. I’m taking it all as another opportunity to flaunt my robust outdoor wardrobe and accessories. Finally, all the years of collecting coats and scarves and hats will pay off. And you all laughed and said I was frivolous. Who’s frivolous now?
This is when the chill in the air starts to stick, when the vestiges of summer warmth in the ground finally release their hold. In the subways of the cities, that same warmth is suddenly a comfort you can feel leaving. It is both relief and cause for concern. After a summer when the heat was sometimes overbearing and overwhelming, a little chill was something you could embrace. Part of you knew it was wrong, that you would look back at this moment as when it all began and regret your friendliness with the first snap of cold, and part of you didn’t care because it felt inevitable.
In many ways, October is the anti-thesis of March – it comes in like a lamb and out like a lion. A lion in costume and Halloween splendor. Some of the year’s most beautiful days can be found here, when sunlight sifts through the canary yellow leaves of the trees after a rain, and the sidewalk reflects it all in brilliance you somehow don’t see in summer or spring. It’s a beauty found only in October.
Ropes of goldenrod drape the highways, while explosions of asters perform their shows like echoes of the Fourth of July. The light still carries some warmth, sometimes quite a bit, and the sky is likely the bluest it will be for the remainder of the year. It’s the blueness of the sky I will miss most, at least at first.
Slowly, and then quickly, it all begins to change. The leaves go first, just a few here and there, only in the strongest gusts of wind, and then a storm will come, maybe the remnants of hurricane, and suddenly just a few added drops of water tear them all off at once. Thrilling and obscene, it’s a striptease that’s over too quickly.
October
And the trees are stripped bare
Of all they wear
What do I care?
Greeting October this year gives me pause, like it usually does, but I’m a bit different than I was last year. Actually, I’m probably a lot different, and so my guard is up in new ways, and down in others. Over the past year, I’ve managed to deconstruct the forty-five-year-old fortress around me, while building an inner stability and sense of self that was somehow always there, but hidden and disguised, even to my bifocal-demanding eyes. And so as October arrives, I feel both naked and fortified. It will not be like last year, or any other year.
Goldenrod gets a bad reputation, blamed for the evils of ragweed when its own pollen is sticky and not airborne. It puts on the fiery show when it is the ragweed that is making everyone sneeze. I’ve always dreaded the arrival of goldenrod’s blooms, the way they signified school starting up again, the way they promised more people and more interactions, more stress and more worry, and more distance from the safety and sweetness of summer.
October
And kingdoms rise
And kingdoms fall
But you go on and on…
Yes, this year will be different, because I’ve shone a light in most of my dim corners, and driven away the shadows, mostly because they were make-believe, composed out of my own fears and perceived injustices. The ones that turned out to be real, the ones I had to confront, were dealt with and dismissed. Some proved stubborn and difficult to eradicate, and I had to work a little harder. Some are in a perpetual state of progress.
The work is challenging, but the work is good, and in spite of all the outward appearances I have carefully orchestrated over the last forty-five years, it turns out that I enjoy working hard toward something. My hands are as happy digging in the dirt of the garden as they are swirling the whipped body cream of the Beekman Boys into each other.
Fall is about hard work. Harvesting and preparing, stocking and baking, hunkering down and fluffing up the winter nest. October is when that process syncs and clicks. September contains more summer than fall – October finally gets to fully flower. Like the goldenrod, nodding along roadsides and forest edges, October is both showy and subdued. By the time the first hard frost arrives, it too will be laid bare.
The music of Schumann’s ‘Ghost Variations’ was supposedly sung to him in a feverish dream near the end of his life, and it comprises his last written work. In the midst of writing them he tried to drown himself in the Rhine, only to be rescued by bargemen, and a day or two later he reportedly finished the music. After that he voluntarily entered an asylum where he would die two years later.
There is something very ghostly about this music, fitting for the eve of October, fitting for the time of the year when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest and most easily penetrable. Unlike some ghost stories, this one is more soothing and consoling, resulting in calm and acceptance, a resignation to the customary line between the physical world and the spiritual world, and those elusive moments when the line is blurred or erased.
Shadows of the past are my usual ghosts. They haunt and vex my every step, and no matter how hard I have tried to shake them, their release only comes with a hard-won and well-earned understanding of why they remain. It’s best to make peace with such ghosts, to embrace the aches of the past and to gently but deliberately untie their tethers from the present. Like so many people, sometimes all they want is acknowledgement – a nod and a kind word of forgiveness or apology – and this is a perfect time of the year to do so. A winter is best spent stark and bare – it is the natural way of the world, which wants to strip everything down starting with the leaves, and leave its own mark in ice or snow until it’s ready to clothe us again.
The day had been particularly trying and difficult. A phone conversation ran through my lunch, and I didn’t get outside for my usual walk. The sky had started overcast and grew progressively dimmer before spitting a bit in the early afternoon. When I finally got home, I had to put in another hour of work to deal with a deadline, and by the time I scarfed down a leftover burger for dinner, my nerves were frazzled and my constitution was shot.
Then the damn Presidential debate started and I could only sit through about half of it, shutting the shit off by 9:50. Half-traumatized and half-shell-shocked, I felt on the verge of maniacal laughter or a crying tantrum, and without thinking or putting any effort into it, I immediately headed into the living room to meditate. It was, I later realized, an instinct and habit, like reaching for a cocktail would have been a year ago, and it suddenly struck me how natural it all felt. I pulled up this album of meditation music to drown out the debate that continued to rage in the other room and settled into the lotus position.
Lighting the end of a stick of sacred wood, I watched the flame flicker ~ bright and soul-enriching ~ before blowing it out and letting the smoky incense trail around me. A gossamer protection and talisman, floating fortress of ethereal filament, it formed a certain energy field that set the scene for the deep and steady inhalations of breath that carried me through the next twenty five minutes.
I hadn’t intended to make my meditation this late in the evening, or even at all. On office days it’s difficult to find the time or slow down enough to have a meaningful session. I suppose it should be the opposite, but I’m not quite there yet. It was enough that in this moment of stress and duress, the first thing my mind went to, and the first solution that my body demanded, was meditation.
This big bouquet of lilies, currently emitting a pretty and potent perfume into the entire living room, gave me an idea as I was gazing upon its beauty the other night. I tend to use fresh flowers in bouquets for the summer, when they’re available outside, as well as in the floral section of the market, but I don’t do it as regularly during the fall and winter. This year, I may change that. We are going to need as much beauty as possible.
I also tend to only buy flowers when we are having guests, but as that’s gone by the wayside for the moment, why not do it for Andy and me? We are more than enough, and one can never put enough beauty on display.
Every 12 or 14 years or so, I get a hankering for a corn dog, and so I have one. I don’t give much thought to what constitutes a corn dog, which is probably why I can stomach them. When you think about it, they’re rather bizarre. Best not to dwell. I’m good for another dozen years.
It doesn’t happen that often, but on those years when our pool season gets cut short for whatever reason, we do our best to keep the pool heated and running until the last warm days have departed. That worked well this year, when I’ve been able to make it into the warm water at least three times since the calendar clicked to fall. It’s a welcome bonus we absolutely needed. And a happy reminder that all is not lost when it comes to little joys and last-minute reprieves.
Having already used R.E.M.’s exquisite ‘Nightswimming’ (my favorite song of theirs) in this post, I’m going with ‘New Orleans Instrumental No. 1’ for this swim post, taken from their best album ‘Automatic for the People’. It has an end-of-summer vibe to it, mellow and slightly somber, with a certain sweetness that tempers an inherent sadness. When fall arrives, those are the vibes that come out.
The water is different now. Warmer than the air, it’s not refreshing like it was in early August and summer was at its height, but rather embracing and comforting. It wraps around the body like a gossamer blanket, barely there, but noted immediately as soon as you slip out of it. At those moments the night air is harsh and bitter, cutting into your skin with the slightest breeze. You slip back in like you would into bed on a winter morning.
A pair of citronella candles glows and flickers. There is still the possibility of mosquitos; a couple of them found their way inside recently, seeking warmth, seeking blood. On this night, they keep their distance, adding to the eerie quiet that hangs over everything.
It’s a quiet not found during the summer, when all sorts of insects make their noise and voice their concerns, when the aforementioned mosquito brigade buzzes and pricks, and, later, the crickets chirp their quirky song. Tonight I listen to the quiet lapping of the water on my neck and shoulders, and the occasional rustling of the fountain grass when the air moves just the slightest.
There’s something reassuring about an autumn that enters in such silence.
I don’t recall ever actually having pancakes for dinner so when my friend Lorie gave us some Stonewall Farmhouse Pancake Mix and Wild Maine Blueberry Syrup it felt like the time had come. I’ve had some unpleasant pancake trials and tribulations in the past, so they’re always a crap shoot, but this time they turned out – more deliciously appealing to the stomach than the eyes perhaps (I’m a pancake novice/destroyer, so I’m really just thankful they didn’t burn up).
These fluffed up beautifully, and I added some fresh blueberries to the mix to match the syrup. I also think I figured out what was going wrong on those previous attempts, and it’s a neat little reflection of life in general: previously the griddle/skillet/pan was too hot. The moment anything hit the pan, it smoked and burned and died on the spot. The batter on top remained uncooked, so by the time those beautiful bubbles started forming, the bottom was burnt and the top was woefully raw. This works wonders when I’m searing tuna or steak, but it’s not the ideal setting for a pancake.
Today, I keep the heat on a medium to low setting. Not needing to rush anything, I’ve honed the art of patience – even the simple amount of patience it takes to let the bubbles form as the bottom turns slowly into a golden brown – and a sense of moderation when it comes to the heat. There is a serious life lesson in that, and I’m just learning it and putting it into play.
As for serving these as dinner, there’s a lesson in that as well, and it’s one that 2020 has beaten into us no matter how much we have fought against it. Go with the flow. Be amenable to change, even when it means switching up traditions and practices that have gone on for decades. Be open to new things, new paths, new ways to discovery. That may be an even bigger lesson, especially this year.
One more lesson: pancakes are filling. Even for dinner. And they’re always worth it.
Even the azaleas have gone completely bonkers because of 2020. On a day when downtown Albany saw manholes blowing up and burning away, I found the sight of this confused azalea more disturbing, but also more enjoyable.
We have witnessed this phenomenon before, usually brought about by a shift in temperatures that triggers something in the plant to set a few blooms into motion. I’m just glad there was enough time to see them flower; sometimes a late-season warm spell will send out buds whose blooms never see the light of day.
Where did the month go? Time somehow flies quicker while under the constricts of a COVID world. I thought it would be the opposite, but not having destinations or trips or movies takes away the significant markers that slow and still time, and without such demarcations the more even and consistent activities of work and waking fly by at a quicker clip. It turns out that doing less quickens the way time works. I’m not thrilled with that – time was moving plenty fast before this. Surely there’s a clever mechanism or mind trick that will slow things down. Maybe I will find it in mindfulness. My daily meditation also just moved up to 25 minutes, and nothing is preventing me from adding to that. Fall closes some windows, and opens some doors. On with the weekly recap, and it will be a recap of recaps, as summer ended and fall began.
Saving all the Speedo posts for the triple-part entry that comprised Summer 2020, it was still difficult to muster much excitement for a season that left us without any proper vacation, beach time, and an open pool for half the summer. Check it out anyway: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.
“The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.†― Ibram X. Kendi
“I do struggle because I’m attracted to beautiful things, yet at the same time I am actually very aware, in some sense, of their lack of value and that the most important things in life are your connections to other people.” ~ Tom Ford
While Tom Ford has a fun and effervescent collection of lighter fragrances for spring and summer (the Neroli Empire for example) it’s his wickedly dark and smoky concoctions that are more suited to fall and winter that appeal to my primal olfactory beast. There are a few Private Blends that I wear only from now until November, and they are the fragrant signifiers of fall, and all the decadent drama it typically exudes.
It starts with ‘Amber Absolute’ ~ probably one of my top three TF Private Blends. It’s like the resinous incense of some sacrilegious church-inspired orgasm, dissipating in the smoky air of dappled sunlight shining through a window of stained glass. It’s one of Ford’s most potent mixtures, though some have said it’s been watered down in recent years (if it’s even still made ~ I believe it may have been discontinued a while back).
A hint of incense also informs the magnificent ‘Vert D’Encens’ which is actually where I began this fall’s fragrance journey a few days ago. It’s compelling notes of fresh green are perfectly resplendent of September’s happy tendency to hold onto the sun and warmth a little while longer.
A drier, woodsier scent is to be found in ‘Bois Marocain‘ which is as much an exotic inspiration from a faraway land as it is a reflection of the New England forests where Hester Prynne sinned. If that makes no sense, I’m sorry ~ that’s just the way it smells to this nose. Dry, sinful, decadence – like a roll in the burning leaves.
When it comes to burning, that brings me to my latest acquisition: ‘Tobacco Oud’ and its exquisite sweet and smoky combination, somehow evocative of scenes I’ve only seen in my mind. A library of wooden shelves, dusty books, and a worn leather armchair. A side table glowing beneath a fringed lamp of red silk. The sweetness of tobacco smoke rising from a pipe.
That was a life I never lived, but I wanted it ~ not the life as much as its sensual trappings, its atmosphere and smoky cocoon of spicy warmth. I’ll do a more in-depth review of ‘Tobacco Oud’ ~ for now it’s all in my head, where it shall reside in splendor until the real memories of a run-down corner of Amsterdam reveal themselves in a future post.
‘I’m actually a very, extremely, almost pathologically shy person, which no one believes today because I have mastered a work/public facade that takes an enormous amount of energy to project.’ ~ Tom Ford
