There’s a small little shaded nook that’s on the path to the Marginal Way.
While technically the space is heavily trafficked, most people rush on by for the more dramatic gardens further down the path, and for the sea itself, crashing against the rocky outcroppings. There is also a little grove of trees that lowers some of its limbs to somewhat obscure the purple asters, the kind seen here in some sunlight.
I needed this memory right now. We also needed Maine this year, but COVID circumstances have kept us home. Seeing these asters the other day brought it all back…
In its somewhat secretive spot, the asters in Ogunquit winked only to those of us who noticed them. You had to slow down a bit, and you had to look a little closer. In the shade, the purple hues were even better at hiding than had they been conspicuously in the spotlight of the sun. Their shyness resonates with me.
For many years, this would traditionally be the time when we’d be preparing for our fall trip to Maine, packing for temperatures that could swing dizzily from eighty-degree beach days to thirty-degree night flurries. The same held true for our Memorial Day weekend visits, so we are accustomed to bringing a little of everything.
In the smiling faces of these asters, I see those happy days again. I recall lazily rolling out of bed and trundling along to Amore Breakfast with Andy, and I can picture the leaves beneath our feet, the receding frost as the sun ascends. I remember our siestas in the knotty pine room, when I’d return from Bread and Roses with some coffee for Andy and a cookie for later.
Nowadays it’s Andy who makes the coffee in our kitchen as fall whips through the fountain grass outside the window, shaking the finches still clinging to the seedbeds of the cup plant. They seem as sad to see summer go by as we are, but it’s warm inside, and our focus shifts cozily to the warm hearth…
Happily, these three favorite people of mine are still dining out and about whenever possible, and in whatever manner and means this new world demands. The featured photo is from a sunny October weekend visit to Amore Breakfast in Ogunquit, something we will look to do again possibly next year, because there is always hope. All four of us keenly felt our extended absence from Ogunquit this year – it’s been too long, and we can’t wait to return when things get back to normal, or at least into a mode of new normality.
The other photos are from a recent birthday dinner at Yono’s, which is probably our favorite Albany restaurant (tied perhaps with dp: An American Brasserie) and I put them up here to remind myself as much as anyone else the importance of family at such times. In the next few weeks, when our country tears itself apart and who knows what may come of it, I find myself retreating and relying on those who mean the most to me – the family and the friends I have made into my family – and that’s how I’m getting through it.
Luckily, I have Andy to help see us through the difficult times, and operating under a safe veil of social isolation and a quarantine-like fortress, we will batten down the hatches and hole up in our home for the fall and winter to come. We will be all right. We have to be.
One of the unheralded joys of the Chinese dogwood tree is its crop of fruit. While not genuinely viewed as edible (the fibrous fruits don’t taste awful as much as their pithy texture makes them undesirable) they are enjoyed by birds and squirrels, which have been going crazy for this year’s crop of bright red berry-like fruit.
For humans, they are more ornamental than functional, and they’re like a second round of blooms before the foliage lights itself on ghostly fire. It’s one of the many charms held by the Chinese dogwood tree, and why we have several in our yard. The finale is about to begin, and by the time it’s done, the buds will have been set for next spring, proof that this lovely tree is always thinking ahead. A tree after my own heart.
It’s been almost a year since I had my last alcoholic beverage, and in that time I must admit to feeling much better both physically and mentally. In addition to that, I’ve been lucky enough not to really miss it all that much – and if I can give up drinking in 2020 then I can pretty much do fucking anything. The only time I felt a slight tinge of wanting alcohol was when the seasons shifted and the idea of a Negroni drifted across my radar. It was probably my all-time favorite cocktail, and I loved it in the spring, and most especially in the fall, when its bitter orange flavor cut through the colder air and warmed the interior of my belly.
I remember several specific moments that happened around a negroni – a fall afternoon before a Madonna concert with Suzie in New York City, an October evening at the Front Porch while waiting for my parents and Andy to join me for dinner, and the flight of Negronis at Cinquecento with Andy on a Boston date night. It holds a special place in my heart, and was the one thing I missed. Especially in late August, when the weather shifts into something cooler, which also happened to be the night of crazy lightning storms right before my birthday this year.
Andy and I were in Boston, trying out the new Terra restaurant at Eataly. We’d only dressed for summer because the day had been so stifling, and by the time the storms descended, we were seated and chilly. The idea of a proper Negroni suddenly seized me, with its bitter bite and bright red coloration. It screamed coziness and warmth and fall in the best possible ways. My cucumber mocktail arrived, and while it was delicious it was slightly too sweet. Designed more for mid-summer than the end of it, and definitely not a cool, stormy night. Andy’s twist on orange soda arrived, and he took a sip and immediately offered some to me, saying it was strange but good.
I waited a bit and then took a sip. Immediately I perked up. This was it! The taste I’d been craving, the slight sting of bitterness that had proven elusive all these months of mocktail-making. It was the closest I’d come to finding a drink that tasted like the tricky Campari element that forms the main thrust of a Negroni. The soda was called Ginger Baladin – produced in Italy and the closest approximation to Campari that I have found. Locating the remaining bottles that Eataly had in stock the next day, we brought them all home, and proceeded to order a bunch more from their website. One can never have enough Negronis for fall.
While it stands alone as an aperitif and Negroni substitute, I added the juice of an orange for a deeper citrus flavor, and a couple drops of bitters for added, well, bitterness. A few days later I tried it again with a blood orange, which worked even better, lending it a deeper red color more reminiscent of the original inspiration. My Negroni fix was fixed, and fall was suddenly a whole lot brighter, and more brilliantly bitter.
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.
