Tag Archives: Fall

End of October 2023: A Long Book of Poems About Everyone in My Life

I am writing this a few days early, listening to a playlist that Spotify created for me: “unhappy heartbroken saturday afternoon.” Am I offended by that? Maybe. If I think too much, maybe it becomes true. My inner monologue has been a little tumultuous lately as I reevaluate some of my priorities. But today I’m really enjoying my own company. I find myself in awe of my own contentedness and my dedication to myself. My heart is full.

I’ve been occupying my time with meditative activities this month. Practicing mindfulness, crocheting, reading, walking. Movies! I love them so much. It’s so wonderful. Sometimes I need to distract myself from things that are making me sad or anxious. Other times it’s just nice to have routine in my life. These activities have been lulling me into autumn this year. The sun in Southern California has been doing that too. Crazy how you can feel one way, then sit outside for twenty minutes and feel another way. Crazy how watching Kill Bill on my laptop can cure most of what ails me. The sweater I am slowly crocheting is coming together.

At the end of this month, I have been thinking about self-worth and how I spend my time. I want to get back to the things that make me happy and make me like myself more (see The Smiths). I think it can be hard to stay away from things that make me dislike myself, but a bigger picture perspective can often remedy that feeling for me. Lately, I feel so lucky to have the capacity for romance in my life (by romance, I mean in the sense of feeling excitement and wonder in daily life). Beauty, the arts, profound wisdom. Anything beyond survival is superfluous, really. But I am so grateful that those things feel necessary to me and my own personal sense of fulfilment.

I would also like to take myself less seriously and lighten up. Life is just life! I get so concerned with the rules and expectations that I set for myself (or that others set for me). Sometimes, I would just like to do what I want to do and be free from outside influence. If only I didn’t care what other people think so much! I think I put too much weight on the advice and criticism of others. If I took most of that as optional, I think I could let go of a lot of what holds me back.

But I love and appreciate most everyone in my life. People are so amazing. I want to write a long book of poems about that. And I will one day! That means that even when it feels like there is nothing to look forward to. There is.

On Living: Mary Oliver and the Woods

So I don’t post much on this blog beyond my end-of-month posts, but today I was absolutely floored by a Mary Oliver poem and had to put my thoughts down. Here is the poem:

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.


“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

I don’t know what to say. But here are words anyways. Mary Oliver is a genius. I don’t know how she gets away with so much little repetition, yet manages to keep pace in this poem. I don’t know why the choice of “three things” works so well when this is not a fairytale. I don’t know how she can get away with using the word “salvation.” I don’t know how I can see the Blackwater Woods in my mind now, though I have never been to Cape Cod.

I love the woods. I love the cyclic nature of the woods. I love the peace and the slow growth. I love big existence. Nature is a trope that is all at once so overdone, so necessary, and so true. I don’t know! This poem makes me so emotional; it makes me think about how there are so many things and people I want to hold against my bones. And how everything is so ephemeral. But still, it is better this way.

Here are some songs that give me a similar feeling: the bigness of life and existence. The smallness of today in the scheme of everything. Enjoy them today and every day.

I think this song is in a famous movie from the past thirty years. I don’t remember which one.
This song is so phenomenal and so beautiful. I think the title is genius too.
This song makes me want to be in love.

End of September 2021: Falling

Falling because it’s finally autumn, but beyond that, it’s a state of mind. Falling into routine. Falling into oneself again, now that the heat is dissipating. Falling into good books and talks with friends. Falling and picking yourself back up because that’s the kind of person you’ve become. Someone with grit and determination.

I watched the movie Her (2013) (yes, Joaquin Phoenix and his AI girlfriend) and loved it. I felt like it romanticized loneliness in a way that was honest and beautiful. I also love wearing the color red lately, so I couldn’t look away. It felt like the right film to watch in this season: a warm transition out of summer towards the acute isolation that the colder months can bring. The soundtrack is stunning and full of gorgeous piano. The whole time I was thinking of a line from Alex Dimitrov’s poem, “LSD,” that goes: part of me on a beach.

But it’s time to embrace those things that we couldn’t in the summer. Good fashion and hot drinks. Nights inside and allowing yourself to just be. Not feeling bad about not being anywhere. The weather can always be blamed.

I hope you are having a great fall season thus far. I hope it is a time to shed the old and become the new. I hope you watch something that you find truly beautiful. I hope that you listen to all your favorite music.