what's good : fall

A lovely gloomy combination in my part of the world

“…autumn is the hardest season
the leaves are all falling
and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground
and the trees are naked and lonely
I keep trying to tell them
new leaves will come around in the spring
but you can’t tell trees those things
they’re like me they just stand there and don’t listen...”

~ Andrea Gibson

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In mood + shopping: Perhaps I am the only white lady of a particular age in America who does not enjoy a Pumpkin Spice Latte¹ but I do adore everything else about Autumn, including its chill + prickly aura of melancholy.² Bring me the football, the cider,³ the cinnamon candles;⁴ wrap me in cardigans, wooly slippers, and fingerless gloves.⁵ Let the rain come shake & soak summer out of town, so I can lie in my electric-blanketed bed and watch drops dance like moody tears down my cloud-filled window. The perimenopausal heat waves are more tolerable during this season, whether they’re warming me in a practical way or inspiring morose poetry.

My fall fantasy aesthetic.

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In poetry: For more Andrea Gibson goodness, please see their website or [re]visit my post featuring them last year. I’m going old school with this week’s full poem - it is literally old (written in September 1819) and a favorite from my high school days in College Prep English, where I fancied myself a Romantic and therefore deeply thoughtful in ways no one over 30 could possibly understand. I now know I mostly loved Keats (and Byron and Shelley) more because they were considered naughty boys at the time and died young than for any rational literary reasons. Yet I am still fond of their eye for the overlooked and/or underappreciated beauty in Nature.
Here is an ode from Keats to my beloved season, written in the last year of his life⁶ and full of all the luscious imagery & youthful angst a teen girl could want in a crudely neon 1986; I might have even whispered Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness to myself at the bus stop, eyes closed, more than once. I’m pretty certain I created elaborate drawings of lines in each stanza, from …fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run / to …on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, / Drowsed with the fume of poppies, / ending with While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, / And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue… /
Then I probably put a Chicago love song on my record player and cried quietly in my room.

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To Autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
  Steady thy laden head across a brook;
  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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In movies + music: When Harry Met Sally… takes place during many seasons, literally and figuratively, but the image of them walking through Central Park in fall is on the soundtrack cover and best represents the overall vibe for me: A time (and place, and people) we come back to because it makes us feel all the things, beyond affection or lust, a special kind of love that brings butterflies and also an irritating familiarity letting us know we belong somewhere, that we’re not alone. In fall,⁷ it’s colder but we can get cozy in sweaters & thick socks & blankets, and holding hands by the fireplace feels better than on a sweaty summer day. Falling leaves pile up yet they smell so good that we forgive them for the extra chore. Autumn is a sweet time and a frustrating time, and it won’t hear your pleas or reasoning; it simply hangs around looking pretty until you gladly give in to its charms. Then we miss it when it’s gone.

This song is performed by Harry Connick, Jr. on the movie soundtrack and I love it, but there is something extra special about the comfortable, loving companionship Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong bring to their version of “Autumn in New York.”

“Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them—
The summer flowers depart—
Sit still—
as all transform’d to stone,
Except your musing heart.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from The Autumn

1. PSL® to the Insta crowd…

2. Especially? #LeoVirgoDramaQueen

3. Once upon a time I was a naively privileged lover of the Trader Joe’s variety but due to their weirdly racist/bigoted names, unfair labor practices, and their predatory behavior with small food brands, I’m finding better alternatives: Here are a few places in Washington State for nonalcoholic ciders + some great makers of hard ciders [NB we have a subscription from Press Then Press but receive no compensation for this mention]

4. For incredible, sustainably made-in-Oregon vegan soy scents, check out Stella Mare/Pacifica products.

5. For writing about + picture-taking of all the fall around me, of course. Favorite versions: cute & functional, lightweight Storiarts nerd girl joys (also made in Portland, OR - I have 3 pairs) and the warmer & fancier yet sturdy recycled cashmere luxuries from B.B. Sheep.

6. …when he was forced to get A Real Job that made money, then died of tuberculosis. Which is probably why this poem is largely a metaphor for the end of life. #Spoilers

7. Speaking from the Pacific Northwest, where we actually experience all four seasons.