Whispers of the full Harvest Supermoon had grown over the days leading up to it. I actually avoided much of the talk until the insanity of work and the idiocy of the drivers on the road made me wonder whether something was astrologically afoot, at which point I asked Andy and he confirmed that a supermoon was on the way.
I’ve never done well with super moons. They’ve resulted in some vicious arguments, some semi-intentional accidents, and some dastardly set-backs over the years. Only recently have I begun to embrace them, turning that lunar insanity from chaotic lunacy into focused moon energy, trying to harness the power and the pull of our nearest heavenly body. Tonight’s blog post will reveal how I literally did that.
For now, these blurry shots of the moon were taken the night before it went full and super and eclipsed. There is often magic and madness in the lead-up and lead-out of a full moon moment. Such energy is too great to be contained in a single night, and the universe doesn’t like to put too fine a point on such things. Come back tonight to see how the actual Harvest Moon played out…
Clouds gather in the sky between Vermont and New York – a visually-arresting crux affording only a glimpse of the blue sky that spread across most of the day. Troubling clouds, perhaps, more for the spirit than any following rain – for the rain stays away. The sunlight seems to be drawing it up into the sky, and still nothing comes of it. Tease. Portending preview. Harbinger of hell…
A certain femininergy is coming to the blog this fall, as we look to right the world with the hope of women, because men seem to do most of the fucking up these past few centuries. To that end, look for a celebration of the female here, and a celebration of everything divine. That began in no small way with my friend Suzie who was kind enough to drive me out to Vermont for this rollercoaster of a day trip. She reminded me of the difficult balancing act of being a mother. That’s never been lost on me, as complicated as things may occasionally be. Yet let us also remember the words of Leo Tolstoy in the epic ‘Anna Karenina’: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
But that’s all for fall – we are still in the throes of the final days of summer, so we take it all with a laugh and lilt and a humorous peek at some of the ladies we happened across during our day in Vermont. A little spooky, a little kooky, and maybe just a little bit coquette. Summer exits with dramatic flair and ghostly sighs.
It was slated to be our pre-fall pow-wow to welcome the upcoming season, but summer decided to stick around in full-sun force, so our recent day-trip to Vermont turned into a celebration of this last week of the sunny season. A simple folding fan in my hand was enough as Suzie was kind enough to drive us into Manchester, where we’ve started a little fall/almost-fall tradition of a Vermont day-trip get-away. Both of us seemed to be in need of escapism, and so we made our way over the rolling hills of New York and into the instantly-more-picturesque environs of Vermont.
We got some serious family talk out of the way first – Suzie is always a safe sounding board, and she knows me and my family better than just about anyone. She also just sent her first-born off to college and had her own stories to tell; there’s no better way to get through a moment of melancholy than with an old friend. We’ve been doing this for decades, and it’s one of life’s greatest comforts.
We made our usual stops at favored haunts, pausing for a lunch of crab toast and pizza before finding our way to an ice cream store that had the best thing we have tasted in years: the maple creamee. It’s a soft-serve version of a twist on maple syrup ice cream. I should have prefaced this proclamation with the fact that I don’t typically like maple candy – it’s usually too sweet for me – but for whatever reason this hit us as incredibly delicious. I’d even gone the extra step of ordering mine in a root beer float, completely at odds with someone who doesn’t like things too sweet – and yet this was insanely good. We are going back this fall just to eat it again.
Stuffed with all the sweet goodness Vermont had to offer – forget warm apple cider on a day soaring into the 80’s – we packed it back in the car and made our winding way back home. It wasn’t the quaint entry into fall I’d originally planned and anticipated – it was instead a hot and happy ending of summer, the way life can sometimes reward us when we let our stubborn notions go and follow its gentle guidance.
The first was apparent and I was zooming in on it.
Only after I opened the window to the backyard did I see the second one, thanks to its immediate bolting out of the vicinity when it heard the window squeak open.
Two rabbits were making the most of these glorious last few summer days. If you look in the shadow beneath the lawn chair, you’ll see what I later realized I had captured before scaring it away with the window.
I watched the remaining one for a while – it’s good for the heart to hold still in these last moments of summer, especially when the sun is so lovely and so warm, and a rabbit is pausing to pay its respects too. At this point the garden is in need of some editing and cutting back, so any help the rabbits want to provide in munching on leaves is fine by me.
As I closed the window to the backyard, I wandered to the front door before sitting down for y daily meditation. There were two more rabbits there. Could they be the same ones from the back? Unlikely, as they seem to have been there a while based on their peaceful and slow grazing on the grass. But who knows… rabbits are magical creatures, and I wouldn’t put it past them to try to trick me in such a whimsical manner.
Here, too, the last rays of the day’s sunshine drenched their endeavors, summer hanging on to the very last minute, perhaps showing fall how nice it can be when things are done gently. The preponderance of rabbits is also a boon to my soul when it needs something enriching. It was a happy end to the last Monday of summer.
We have arrived at the final week of summer, and it feels like we are actually getting one last dose of the good stuff – thank you global warming! While the world burns, a look back at the week that came before…
Doesn’t it sound strange? That happens with any word if you say it enough – it starts to sound strange and odd and you wonder how a word came to ever be in the first place – or maybe it’s just my mind reaching its long-predicted breaking point.
Anyway, our pot of papyrus, drainage holes mostly blocked for extra moisture, and which usually does quite well with the regular watering and feeding I give it, failed to astound as it has in previous years. Another disappointing result of this past summer’s waning charm.
Let us have one final full weekend of coquette escapism before the official arrival of fall, and for this one I’ll even get up into a dress and Sunday hat and pearls. A boy shouldn’t go anywhere without a pearl necklace. The Sunday hat is really just for Sundays, or Kentucky Derbies, but it fits the finery of our coquette aesthetic for the moment, and in honor of summer magic it stays on. Frilly and fantastical, I’m seeing this summer theme through to the end, though in all honesty I’m rather over it. The sweetness has turned sour, which is the greatest risk to any act of coquetry.
A reprise, then, for this penultimate summer weekend, courtesy of Laufey, who provided much of the soundtrack for our coquette moments. This is ‘Bewitched’ again.
A bit of bewitchery bodes well for the transition into fall, as does a certain feminine energy – and all will be revealed in the months to come. For now, let’s let out a sigh of gratitude for the summer. It’s largely been good to us, even if we haven’t always been good in return. There were sunny and beautiful days where I just didn’t manage to make the most of it, choosing to stay indoors, to stay hidden, to stay in a stasis as much from grief as from healing. There were also new wounds that opened old ones just when I might have thought things were better. The conundrum of a coquette summer… the work of the coming fall.
The sun shines differently in September. It still warms the day, but its staying power has diminished. The earth is priming itself for the bigger chill on the way. I hope it takes its time, slowing advancing into coolness instead of taking some precipitous drop that kills our tender plants in one fell swoop. Maybe that’s the better way though – like jumping right into the deep end of the pool instead of wading slowly in. Rip that ridiculous cherry bandage right off with nary a flinch or flutter.
Our hanging ferns in front of the house have performed poorly this summer, putting on the worst show of any ferns I’ve ever hung there. Of course they happen to be the most prominent plants on view to the street, another one of life’s little fuck-overs. I’ll take them down right after I write this, and drop them into the dumpster. Beneath the veneer of a coquette summer, there is always an underlying ugliness, some bit of bitterness to poison the sweet. Now I’m already veering into fall, and we still have a glittering part two of this madness to post.
While everyone else’s tomatoes went gangbusters this summer, our two pots of cherry tomatoes – usually very prolific as seen here – have produced about ten cherry tomatoes until this point. Now that we are on the verge of frost, they are beginning to put out fruit. Too little, too late – and a telling sign of how a summer that started out with such promise has turned to total shit.
There was once a time that people assumed tomatoes were poisonous because of their classification as part of the deadly nightshade family. I do so enjoy a plant that inspires fear in simpletons. Wish we had a bit more.
Another week of our coquette summer has quickly come and gone. We may have a few sunny days of warmth and summer to come, but it’s mostly a holding pattern now. We count the days until fall officially arrives. It’s there in the night, and there in the heart. On with the weekly recap…
The darker heart of the coquette world beats more prominently as we near the end of the summer, perhaps sensing its own demise. Too many people flirt with giving up, then when they get right up to the end, the panic of their ultimate weakness sets in and pulls them away from any final act of annihilation. Pish-posh to the boys who cried wolf; we have no time for them here. Wolves, witches, and the wretchedly-bitter who hang on to the very end without whining or complaint – those are the stalwart souls who will see us through the fall.
I’m aware there is a paradox there. It’s an ideal illustration that the coquette life is anything but simply pretty.
Take this post for instance. Crafted in the calm, bright light of the attic, and bound by beautiful strings of pearls, it belies a heart in grotesque riot, and a countenance at grave odds with its peaceful surroundings. One slip of the proverbial tongue, and I might speak of secrets that would hurt others as much as they would unburden my own soul of some of its demons. But this is all to come, and we have a couple more weeks of coquette respite.
“What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.” ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, ‘The Virgin Suicides‘
It’s a lovely segue as we depart the pink world of our coquette summer and shift into a drastically and dastardly different fall experience. Fall will be as wicked and wonderful as it will be beautiful and heartbreaking. Whatever realm of coquette sweetness we have created, and whatever magic we might have made, will all be changed when the clock clicks forward and the seasons shift from summer to fall.
If the movie stays true to the question of what makes a person truly wicked – or posits what wicked might in fact mean – while exploring the friendship of two very different people, I’m sure it will be a raging success. As for the battle of pink and green, it’s one that I’ve fought from both sides now, and for this fall it feels like I’m leaning decidedly into the green. So if you care to find me, look to the Western sky…
There was no morning or early afternoon blog post today, in case anyone noticed, and there is a very good reason for that: I didn’t want to write the damn thing. Just didn’t feel like it. In the same way I haven’t felt like meditating. Or cleaning the house. Or keeping up the garden. It’s an ennui that began after being sidelined with back issues earlier in the summer, and I never quite regained my footing again. Leaning into laziness and feeling entirely uninspired, the second half of summer passed in a haze, and a sense of withdrawal and lack of engagement. My heart hasn’t been in it – and I’m sure that’s been apparent in the writing here.
That said, I enjoyed the all-too-brief break, and I may take more of them. If this blog can be viewed in the life trajectory of spring being the start and winter being the end, I’d say confidently this blog is deep into fall. There may even have been some flurries already. And life will take its twists and turns no matter how much my Virgo tendencies want things to fall into order and precise place. This summer, similar to last summer, has been about learning acceptance – and perhaps refusing acceptance in instances that are simply unacceptable. This fall will be about going one step further – and dealing with that is going to be what I need to do to right this ship. Collateral damage, like the storm that clears out the dead branches of the forest, is inevitable. That may prove disastrous for some, but only if you deserve disaster.
