I can't sleep…
Ask her what she craved
and she’d get a little frantic
about things like books, the woods, music.
Plants.
Seasons.
Also freedom.
— Charles Frazier, Nightwoods: A Novel
Notes:
Autumn is sneaky. Although I’m always on the lookout for it, always primed for it, it bursts into its ephemeral majesty so quickly that I’m always startled by it, too. A tree that I remember as green from yesterday’s walk is crimson today. A tree that I don’t remember at all has taken up residence on some tantalizing band of the color spectrum between orange and pink. My eyes widen and my heart swells — it’s like falling in love. It has that same seed of sadness, that same prickle of death. The magic can’t last.
I’ve lived in places where there’s little change in seasons, where the mercury moseys slightly upward or subtly downward but the landscape doesn’t refashion itself. There’s an argument for such modesty. It doesn’t demand as varied a wardrobe.
And to have the kind of autumn that I savor here in North Carolina means to be plunged into a winter with just enough cold on the worst days to test your mettle, to denude those trees and turn them skeletal. I have neighbors behind me whose house I can barely make out in July. In January, though, I can almost watch the football games on the big-screen television in their lavishly windowed great room.
But that’s January. This is early November, when the leaves that haven’t yet lost their grip are making a brilliant statement, taking a final bow. Autumn in places that have a real autumn teaches you to live in the moment, to open yourself to the world around you, to pay homage, to pay heed. Fail that lesson and you just might miss the whole spectacle, which can retreat as suddenly and stealthily as it arrives. You’re left with regret. It’s a sorry cousin to remembrance.
— Frank Bruni, from “On a Personal Note” (NY Times, November 3, 2022)
Photo by DK @ Daybreak. 59° F. 6:30 to 6:50 am. November 1, 2022. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from Tuesday morning’s walk here.
By the middle of October, the foliage was beautiful. It seemed that the colors had arrived somewhat late, and because there had been so little rain for so long people thought maybe this was why the trees were shy and would not change their color so vibrantly. But then they did! Then they did.
Here is a secret about the beauty of the physical world. My mother told me this when I was very small — my real mother, not the nice mother I made up later to be with me — my real mother told me one day that the great landscape painters understood one thing: that everything in nature started from the same color. And I thought of this as I watched the leaves changing. You may think: Don’t be ridiculous! There are vibrant reds and yellows and greens! And there are. Yet, walking along the river, as I did more frequently now, but also walking down our narrow road, I saw this. That in the yellows and the reds and the greens, they were somehow springing from the same color. And it is hard to describe this, but as more leaves fell I saw this more clearly. Everything seems to start with a kind of brown and it grows from there: The huge slabs of rocks that were on the side of the road were gray and brown, and the oak trees that turned russet were similar in color to the seaweed that I have described as being a coppery color, and the water, whether it is dark green or gray or brown, was of a similar hue.
I also noticed how, in the afternoons, clouds might start to come in and they were gently autumnal; they made the world look quietly soft as though it was already getting ready to tuck itself in for the night. I am only saying what a thing the physical world is!
— Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea: A Novel (Random House, September 20, 2022)
Photo: DK @ Brant Point, Nantucket. October 2, 2022 @ 7:21 am. See more pictures from Brant point here.
Art, attention, gratitude and grace. A quiet healing, ordinary joy. I know these things in my own body. For several years now, my head has felt loose on my shoulders, and I too have felt oddly permeable, no longer so tightly wound. Little shards of self fly off into the wind, and frankly, I am glad to see them go.
In the same way as one pulls the petals from a daisy, she loves me, she loves me not, so too one can pluck one letter at a time from familiar words, revealing the core beneath. Verandah Porche (who invented the term “pluck words”) is especially fond of examples like “slaughter” and “laughter” where the missing letter not only transforms the meaning of the word, but alters its sound as well.
My own favorites center on a little cluster of words that seem, like koans, to conceal a deeper meaning. It is as if one bit into a juicy peach to find its wizened stone, or broke apart an egg to show its golden yolk. For example, when where is plucked, it reveals the answer here; less is the hidden wisdom crouching inside bless; your gives way to the more generous-hearted our; and the small domestic hearth expands into the cosmic earth. Most miraculous of all, perhaps, eyes open into an all-confirming yes. Continue reading “No longer so tightly wound. Little shards of self fly off into the wind.”
“What are the winter months?”
The cab driver chuckled. “You’ve not been to Anguilla Sir?” He paused and continued. “There are no winter months, Sir.”
Who you callin’ Sir? Aha. Old and stupid. 18° 15′ North – standing on the Equator. No seasons.
That was a week ago. It’s 6:10 am. 52° F. We’re trudging up a severe incline at Mianus River Park in Connecticut, back to reality. It’s Christmas Day. 391 acres. No humans, no superficial chit chat – ISTJ magic. Squirrels, Zeke and me. He’s at my heels, the clanking of his steel tags breaking the morning silence. He’s panting. I’m heaving.
It was a week ago. It was 82° F, gusty, the fronds on the palm trees slapping. Anguilla’s beach, fine white sand sifting through your toes, walking on cotton. The sea is warm, clear, the white sand carpets the ocean floor. I’m floating on a thick foam mattress, the tropical winds sashay the hammock. Wispy clouds, paintings, lazily pass overhead. If there was heaven….
That was a week ago. It’s a muddy track from the rains. Footing is sloppy. The Sun is working to burn through the clouds. Mist is rising from the earth. I’m over layered, overdressed and overheating during this December heat wave. And there’s Anguilla. Ever present. But, could you live there? Continue reading “Running With Anguilla. On Christmas Day.”