Fall Is a Craving

Weather

Is the perfect day

one in which you

wear the same clothes throughout,

too cool near the beginning and end,

too warm in the middle,

but never uncomfortable enough

to require a change

or is it one that demands

layers and adaptation to

a larger range of variety?

And is the needed

amount of adjustment

determined purely by

environmental transformation or

does level and type of activity

come into play?

It goes without saying

that a day that is so

uniform and unfluctuating that

it is perfectly comfortable throughout,

no accommodation needed,

is too monotonous to qualify

as perfect.

And wind.

Wind is always required.

Some version of a

temperature bell curve

and air that never rests.

The only question is just

how much dynamism and restlessness

creates perfection.

The weather has been perfect often lately. A beautiful fall for weather and light, if a bit too dry and lacking in autumn colors. I'm just not quite sure how to answer my question posed above, as I go back and forth on my preference.

-----

Which reminds me of a favorite quote from The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature by David George Haskell. Here's how I shared it in Our Biggest Failing Is Lack of Compassion for the World, Including Ourselves.:

For a while now my answer to the question, "What is your favorite season?" has been "The next one." I love all of the seasons each in their own way, but most of all I love the variety they provide. I look forward to the changes. Haskell would seem to agree.

We crave rich variegations of light. Too much time in one ambience, and we long for something new. Perhaps this explains the sensory ennui of those who live under unchanging skies. The monotony of blank sunny skies or of an endless cloud ceiling deprives us of the visual diversity we desire.

And I do. Crave rich variegations of light And of temperature and air movement. Too much sameness dulls me.

-----

I've stolen this post's title from poet José Faus. It's the title of one of the poems in his book The Life and Times of José Calderon. The idea, in fact, comes up in two of his poems.

From "Fall Is a Craving"

Fall is a craving

that lingers long past winter

whispers trail behind

And from "Bitter Suite"

Fall is a hunger

that lingers

long past winter

The second stanza even appears twice in "Bitter Suite." Neither poem particularly spoke to me beyond that image, but the sense of fall as a craving or hunger really resonates with me.

Each season has its rewards. Spring is pure delight, the joy of renewed warmth and light and life after so long without. Summer is sun and color and fullness of life. The starkness of winter brings its own type of beauty, appreciation for what remains in contrast to what is missing that makes it all the more precious. Fall, though, fall includes so much perfection, temperatures and colors and breezes to revel in, yet tinged with the awareness that all of it is fading. Soon it will be gone, overtaken by winter's bleakness. So there is constant bitterness to the enjoyment that makes it all the sweeter, an urgency to devour it lest you miss it, and a yearning to make it last--if not to return to summer or skip forward to spring. Fall is a craving.

I feel I'm in the fall of my life. The early stages, I hope, but the fall nonetheless. It has me contemplating age more often. (See also : One of My Favorite Words Is "Embody".)

The piece from José Calderon that most spoke to me was "I Enjoy." It's meant as a contrast between two lovers, I'm sure, but I relate to it more as a contrast between youth and age. My youth and age, at least. For when I was young I was much more the "she" of this poem and now, on the verge of 50, I'm on the verge of the "I" in it. If not transformed, I have at least transitioned. Age has calmed me and my enjoyments. And with my kids providing a constant source of the "her," I crave the calm of the "I" all the more.

I Enjoy

I enjoy the world swaying

to the demands of age-old scripts

content to lie for hours

with one leg over the other

mimicking the lazy rhythms

of sheltered waves lapping up the beach

Nothing bores her more than to see

a languid ocean spent

miles before it hits the bank

"Give me the roar and crash of water

over the rippled wake

of an indifferent wave"

I have watched the ocean wither

from a high crag after the sun dissolves

the evening fog creeping to the hills

like waves of tumbling smoke

slowly devouring the world

She longs for the cries of wild animals

ahead of raging fires turning tinder

all the brush and growth till speckles

flicker dangerous along a valley floor

I know the desolation

when a leaf descends

after and long journey

from a branch silent

into the still water of a cove

sending ripples

that grow larger to disappear

in the wake of other ripples

stirred by idle winds across

the mirrored surface of a lake

She is alive in raucous winds

that pummel trees and send leaves

crashing to the air tossed waters

She breathes the hard gusts of hurricanes

lashes her self to rocking redwoods

I linger at the edges of hillsides

sweeping up to high mountain meadows

sleep on the loam of purple orange columbines

stitched like a ruffle below the tree line

She rides the rush of water

from snow melts charging

gouging the face of mountains

"Let me jump from glacial tossed boulders

to volcano spewed rocks

and balance at the side of sheer drops

thousands of feet from the hard ground

Give me earth shaking

and rumbling ash spewing hilltops

and you show me to true nature of things"

I sit at the edge of hills

pray to condors eagles and hawks

riding thermals to the top

and laugh at the play of bear cubs

on the folding ridges of the high country

She marvels at the frenzy of bears

taking salmon from streams in big swipes

that turn the waters redder than her hair

I sit and wait beneath a warm moon

feel the heat like whispers on my skin

as the waves cascade in a dull distant snore

and I know that come tomorrow

the world will be mine in the hollow imprint

of a sole where I walked before I turned

and took the time to lay my blanket on the sand

Though I still greatly appreciate roar and frenzy, I find more joy in whispers and ripples all the time.

-----

And to circle back, I find the imagery in the middle stanza perfectly captures the craving of fall:

I know the desolation

when a leaf descends

after and long journey

from a branch silent

into the still water of a cove

sending ripples

that grow larger to disappear

in the wake of other ripples

stirred by idle winds across

the mirrored surface of a lake

The movie Amadeus was a formative one for me, with self-proclaimed "mediocrete" Salieri wishing his whole life he could create beauty and greatness the way he sees Mozart doing. I see recent discovery Hamilton as similar in its dynamic between narrator Burr and his view of Alexander Hamilton. Throughout the story in various ways and explicitly in his song "Wait for It" Burr describes Hamilton taking action when he delays, making a difference in ways he merely dreams of.

I really like this image from Faus' "Why I Don't Sing":

I have not been a painter of life

Life has made me its canvas

and I begin to peel

watch the color fade

I've previously called myself a "storypusher." In Thoughts on Being a Librarian I opened with a Salieri quote from Amadeus and wrote I'm not a storyteller. My talent seems to be analysis and appreciation. I've found a career sharing other people's stories. I'm not a creator. I have not been a painter of life, but a canvas.

Yet as I move into the fall of my life, the greater my craving to be one. Poetry has begun calling to me, both reading it and tentative dabbling like above. I still don't feel I have any stories to tell, but now I want to find some. I get a little closer all the time to wanting to create art in one way or another, to express meaningful things I can share with others. It's not a true motivation yet, but it has become a craving.