Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

Remember when we used to have Walkmans and listen to Prince while we took a giant walk around the perimeter of the neighborhood? Remember when, in childhood, we briefly had a cat? Remember when we had a tetherball court in our backyard, and we practiced and practiced so that we could beat Diane S., who was the best tetherball champion in the sixth grade? Remember when we had a yellow ten-speed, and rode it to the beach before the fog had burned off? Remember when we had delphinium, cosmos, asters, roses, baby's breath all blooming in our garden? Remember when we had a Great Dane that ate the tomatoes off the vine, and the peaches off the tree?

Remember when everyone had a blog?

Well, I remember all of this. Mostly because all of it happened to me, but you can substitute your own events, and you'll, all of a sudden, remember when you were younger, too. And when you blogged, maybe. Well, maybe you never blogged, but I did. I blogged a lot. There were a couple of years when I blogged almost every day.

Catch the light, 9/30.

A post shared by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Sep 30, 2017 at 5:31pm PDT

I'm in my office, and I should do a little grading before 11 a.m., when I have a commitment. So I will, but before I do so, I want you to know that I have the following before me:

• a stack of bookmaking books.
• a copy of Anne Carson's NOX.
• a copy of Ander Monson's Letters to a Future Lover.
• a certificate of tax exemption for the next time I buy a passel of fancy paper for the Publication Center.
• My lunch. 
• a postcard of Hovenweep. 
• broadsides galore.
• a copy of the Eduardo Corral itinerary.
• a kaleidoscope.
• an opalescent glass globe.
• Dayanita Singh's Museum Bhavan.
• India ink.
• a David Hockney print of his acrylic painting of Mulholland Drive.
• a photo of the crowded Beijing Metro.

With everything happening in the world, I want to try--try--to keep choosing love, beauty, and joy, while also still flooding my congresspeople's offices with strongly worded faxes. I want to try.

Hibiscus in the gloaming, 10/1.

A post shared by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Oct 1, 2017 at 7:53pm PDT

To Autumn, worth reading every autumn.

Short observations.

If you have, say, twelve videos to remake, by replacing sneakily screen-grabbed visuals with legit Creative Commons-licensed ones, and re-recording the voiceovers, and maybe making the overall content a little more substantial while you're at it, and also adding captions--

(damn if that's not a long if clause)

--to repeat: if the above are the conditions under which you decide that by god you're going to get some of those videos DONE, son, it does not follow that you should start four at the same time.

Because you're probably not going to finish any of them, and then you're going to feel panicky for days.

*

I'm not complaining. But this weather, it might actually be a little too cold for the middle of September.

And thus it was that I found myself thinking today, but it's okay: it's going to get warm again. It's going to get warm again? I ask you.

*

Days are not infinitely elastic. Poems are acting like strangers.

And here I thought I had less to do, and I still have lots. Lots and lots.

*

I am looking as if from afar--from a great, great distance--at the peaches and tomatoes at the farmer's market. With longing, I think that's implicit in from a great, great distance.

*

I sometimes feel like I've said all the things there are to say on a blog. Just a feeling, not a fact, although it sometimes feels like a fact.

*

This afternoon as we walked in the chill, before the sun went down, the light and air were perfect.

*

Grading is, like, an existential condition.

*

That is all.

The wind in the trees.

I've been working at home today. When I woke and checked the weather, it said warm. And then: cold. A sudden cold snap, I thought to myself, hopefully. "We're going to have a cold snap tomorrow," I said to the historian.

This morning, I was Skyping with a student who lives in Minnesota, and who had not accounted for the time change when she made her appointment, but we caught up with each other nonetheless. Like the every oldening person I am becoming, I asked her about the weather:

Yes, I may also be using terms from olden days, like whippersnapper and skedaddle and lickety split and cold snap. But I am counting on it. I am counting on the cold to arrive and to--with a plus or minus of a few degrees fahrenheit--stay. To snap, and then linger. To be here now, for good.

At breakfast time, I stood in the doorway from my kitchen to the patio, toast and strawberries in hand. The wind sounded gusty. It wasn't cold, but it was noisy. Windy, in point of fact. Enough so that I stepped back inside, to read the paper while eating. The door stayed open. There was a discourse between the still kitchen and the blustery backyard, but I was in and the bluster was out, and that's the way it had to be.

Warm, but with a prophesying wind. Sunny, but with prognosticating clouds.

Autumnal-ish, in a word (plus suffix, which means imprecisely):

Notes for September.

On cleaning out my office, in preparation for the big move to the new building:

1. If you put stuff in a box, and then you don't look at the box for one year or more, throw away the contents of the box, preferably without looking at each individual paper.

2. Magazines and newspapers = stuff to recycles. Why did you stack this on your shelves in the first place?

3. No need for self-loathing, now. 

4. HOWEVER.

5. Just get rid of it in the first place, for heaven's sake.

On the weather:

It is hot. This cannot be denied. But the weather is changeable in September. Today's high of 93 will turn into Saturday's high of 88. And then, as a colleague just pointed out, soon it will be snowing. We live in hope.

On things to look forward to:

New The Mindy Project! New The New Girl! Two Scandinavian novels awaiting me. More and more tomatoes and basil and squash and peppers. Soon: sweaters. And tights! A whole slew of great movies now and to come. Going to visit my daughter. A trip with my son and another daughter. A trip north in October. A solid revision of my (second) manuscript. 

On renewable pleasures:

So many of them: Walking every night with the dog. Watching television with the dog. Taking a walk with my tiny little shuffle, music in my ears. Watching the sky. Autumn dreaming. Sleeping with the window open. Feeling, actually, optimism.

Autumn light.

At home, 4:30 p.m., after a long long long day.

Me, already prone, reading: Will you turn on that light? No, wait.

Historian, with hand on the lamp: Are you sure?

Me: I just want to enjoy that natural light (gestures vaguely at window) for a few minutes longer.

[seven minutes later]

Me: Okay, turn it on.

In other news:

Just let me watch my shows. by lisab

The show.

This week felt like a long, very busy one, but we found time to watch the World Series. I can't remember how long it's been since I watched baseball--maybe that series in 2001, right after September 11. I was in an artists' colony in Vermont. There were a host of New Yorkers who made the argument that it would be so important for the Yankees to win--it would lift the spirits of the city. Churlishly, I did not agree, though I mostly kept that sentiment to myself, I hope. I remember being taken by the freakishly long-bodied Randy Johnson, who threw like some kind of ancient raptor (that's how I thought of it, in any case), and I was stony-hearted against the charms of young Derek Jeter.

The historian has always tracked the Cardinals, if he is not an active fan. That's because his favorite player ever is Stan "the Man" Musial, who was a great player to be sure and also "a good lefty," as the leftist-and-a-half historian likes to point out. So we were, of course, rooting for the Cards. It was fun to watch, for me, since I had really no stake whatsoever in the game, and nonetheless a team to root for. In sports, there's not much more beautiful than a great pitcher hurling the ball, than a great hitter settling into his stance, then connecting with the ball. That sound is a wonderful sound (much like the sound of a basketball going through a net--heaven.). And I have a special admiration for a great fielder--the absolute attention he gives to the ball arcing toward him, the way he moves to be under it, the stillness just before the ball hits the pocket of a glove, or the lateral dive to snatch it before it hits the ground. And I love feeling the vicarious elation of a winning team, and more, a winning town, since St. Louis clearly loves that team; simultaneously, I find it a little heart-rending to see the dejection of the losing team. It's a great spectacle. I was glad to reconnect with it.

This weekend, after something of a movie hiatus--several weekends with illness, more illness, social engagements, fall break--we saw a double-header, 50/50 and The Rum Diary. (In between, in case you're wondering, there was curry.) There was no good reason to see The Rum Diary, and the reasons we did see it can be summed up by the names of movie stars, and also the fact that it was at the same theater in which we saw 50/50, and we wanted to see two movies. Back to the movie stars: honestly, it wasn't the acting that did this movie in--it was a story that begged to be told with more verve and brevity, and instead it was made with slog and long-ass-ery. Sad. But not that sad. Again, no stake in it. It was a movie. Although it must be admitted that one of us turned to the other at about the three-quarters mark and said, "Is this long?" Okay, it was me. Point being, I don't know how long the movie actually was, but it felt long.

But 50/50 was actually not half bad. In fact, I would say it was pretty good, and very good if you minus out an unnecessary romance. There were passages in this movie when I wept (big surprise)--cancer is scary, more scary in real life than in movies, and there was a lot of this movie that got that scariness pretty close to right, both the historian and I agreed. The movie also got this right: that we have the chance to show up for each other in all kinds of ways. That it's worth it, both the showing up and the noticing.

This week, I have been thinking about how hard it is to pay attention to what is there, right in front of us. For a month now, we have had one car between us, and there are moments when what feels like dependency and constrained mobility and, you know, lack of freedom has grated sorely on not just my nerves but my sense of self. It has felt so trying to me. But it's also the kind of thing that makes me ask myself: it's a car, so what? You can't stop at the store on the way home, you don't have that buffer of solitude between home and work, between work and home. Can't you just adjust?

My daughter, on her blog, wrote this week about longing for something missing. But ultimately, she finds, what she has is enough: ultimately, she says, "I do not want to spend my days longing."

I have been thinking about her words during these golden autumn days, days so blessedly beautiful, full of light and warmth and a splendid chill in the mornings and evenings. This morning we planted tulip and daffodil bulbs together. We took Bruiser to the playground for a romp. I made us oatmeal. I want try harder to just be there for whatever fills these days, for all the days we--all of us, beloveds and friends--have together.

The facts.

The thing about October is, it's different wherever you go.

Idaho Falls, where my father was raised and my grandparents lived, is about 10 degrees cooler, generally, than Salt Lake City. And Island Park is generally 10 degrees cooler than that. In Yellowstone, the days are in the 40s. The sky is quilted with cloud.

Because of this general sinking of the year, which is further along the further north you go, the roads and byways of Yellowstone are blissfully unbusy.

The same beautiful rivers, forest, flumes of thermal steam and geyser. The inveterate fisherpeople, who must have to catch and release, but still stand for hours, hip-deep in the Madison. But almost no one else.

Everything is slower.

We're going a few places we haven't gone--the Porcelain Basin, with its siliceous sinter which makes everything opalescent and the pools a serene, rather chilly blue.

The road between Canyon and Tower is closed. There was snow earlier this week and the Dunraven Pass is just too high. Tomorrow we hope to get up early and drive to the Hayden Valley, and see what we can see.

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill.

Autumn is my favorite season, I'm pretty sure. Paradoxically, autumn makes me anxious.

We went to the farmer's market today, and it was the very essence of the season: peaches everywhere, and tomatoes, and all the things that go with tomatoes--basil, eggplant, peppers, garlic. Corn. And grapes, berries of every imaginable variety, the beginning of the onslaught of apples. It's utterly beautiful. You can smell everything, too, there's that much of all of it. Brilliant, heaped in baskets and boxes and on tables.

We bought a box of tomatoes, for roasting. I am thinking about peaches--if I want to make more jam; if I want to bottle some. Or if we should just eat them as they are, as many as we can, until they're gone.


There are two poets for autumn, or maybe just two iconic poems: Keats' autumn ode, and Frost's "After Apple Picking." Both of these poems I read when I was much younger, though they have more power for me now.


Frost says,

I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

"Anxious" seems to mark things these days. Weary, too, but also anxious: how shall I spend these days? What shall I put by?


The last stanza of Keats:

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd 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.

The music is beautiful. It is wailful, it is rumbling, there's nothing for it but to let it sing.

As Monday abolishes the weekend.

This weekend we saw Our Idiot Brother, which was charming and delightful. We enjoyed it very much. We bought peaches and tomatoes and onions and eggs and bread and beans and squash and grapes at the market. I ate a lot of watermelon. I just can't get enough watermelon. We also bought the most beautiful berry threesome: a basket each of blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. We went down to Utah Valley for a family gathering. I finished my Swedish thriller. I read a manuscript for the press I'm on the editorial board of (nice prepositional ending, eh?). Took Bruiser for several walks. Commented on the initial posts in my online classes. Watched two episodes of the old Adult Swim show Home Movies (streaming now on Netflix, highly recommended). Talked with running son, who jumped back into Utah life this past Thursday, surprising me in my office with a bag of Lays Classic Potato Chips. Read the New York Times sitting at the table under the cherry tree. Listened to a big cracking thunder and lightning storm last night.

Today, I have been in my office interviewing editorial candidates for Folio. And while I confess I wish the unstructured, wander-where-you-will qualities of summer, which often eluded me during the actual time I was off work, would last a bit longer, it's been kind of nice to listen to these potential editors talk about their ideas, their plans, their enthusiasms. The show-up-on-time qualities of fall are pretty good, too.

West.

Things I am enjoying right about now.

1. The first-thing-in-the-morning sun, and the last-thing-at-the-end-of-the-day sun.

2. The moon in a nest of clouds.

3. The last tomatoes.

4. The last peaches.

5. Walking the dog in the late evening.

6. My adult children, with their full beautiful lives and the little connections I have with them almost every day.

7. A bagel in the morning.

8. Re-acquainting myself with how sentences work (the subject matter of one of my classes).

9. Choosing clothes to wear every day.

10. Looking forward to a movie tomorrow night. What movie? Who cares?

Wait for it . . . the annual Best Movies So Far post, coming up this weekend.

Here it is:

It's now fully mid-September. As we were pedaling around the 'hood on our bikes in the twilight, I said (and not a bit out of breath, in case you were wondering), "It's the autumnal equinox pretty soon, isn't it?"

"Yep, the 20th, isn't it?" the historian rejoined, in his knowledgeable way.

Right. And then the day will last, briefly, as long as the night; and then the nights will grow longer. So as of this moment, the people, I believe we can all agree that the light is a precious commodity, and we'd all best be making the most of it.

Today, in order to make the most of the light, I

• ate my little breakfast out on the porch and watched our raggedy cherry trees up against the blue and cloud.
• read my student drafts on the terrace outside the Student Center at work.
• took the aforementioned bike ride in the evening.

I hope to do more of the same and similar over the next few weeks, and so should you. Tomorrow, alas, I must arise at the crack of dawn for an early meeting. I will try not to focus on the crack portion of the morning, and instead, look up to see what's happening in the sky. Something good, I bet.

Cooking update: the quinoa salad was lovely today; yesterday, the ratatouille was resplendent. And we still have gorgeous tomatoes left, just lying around, not called for in any recipes, and therefore fair game for any rapacious tomato eaters. Of which there are at least a couple, lurking in the kitchen and environs.

The thick of it.

Hello, September 9, with your aggressive late night e-mails and pursuant troubles galore. Hello, days scheduled from dawn to dusk, already. Hello, the collision of this possible event with that fixed event, and hello, that sweaty feeling that I'm forgetting something. Hello! I hadn't exactly forgotten about you, the thick of it, but I certainly didn't remember how you sidled up, almost silently, and hung around my doorway like a doom.

*

Yet there is beautiful weather, although there are also gusty winds. Yet there are interesting classes to teach and a good crop of litmag students; still, more and more meetings. Yet there is Beatles Rock Band (aka the birthday pony) and leftover birthday cheesecake that I may or may not have eaten for breakfast. And many, many tomatoes, and weeks and weeks left of the farmer's market. And mostly not waking up in the middle of the night because of The Troubles incumbent upon me because of being a faculty leader (aka, FL, which means . . . anyone? anyone? F*** Lisa?). Mostly not, the thick of it, mostly just sleeping with the window still open.

*

It just got so busy so fast.

*

And still, the thick of it, I will be able to keep riding my bike for a little while after dinner for a few more weeks. As long as dinner is early, and before the late night e-mails commence.

Rue is the national herb of Lithuania, and other facts.

I meant to prune my grape vines, plant the seeds I bought late in the winter, clean out all my closets. Now that the harvest is in, the time is clearly ripe for regretting. Or not. I think: not. In mythology, even a basilisk, the breath of which could wilt plants and crack stones, could not destroy rue. Weasels bitten by basilisks could eat rue to recover and return to fight. Perhaps my tendency to regret is a talisman, but for now, I am trying not to let even a single thing in this autumn pass my notice. A couple of weeks ago, I washed the quilt that I will be using all winter, substantial, a little heavy, on our bed at night, to curl up in when doing the crossword, to wrap around me when I'm working here during the day. I am loving the light of autumn, of walking around the neighborhood with Bruiser and seeing, just seeing, the brilliance of everything--leaves tree bush flower stem berry--blazing and burning. It seems to me that the whole valley is, sometimes, glowing, not just with color but with an equinoctial slant to the light. What's the point of regret? Bruiser loves the colder air in the morning and at night. We take a bike ride around the neighborhood at dusk and it is all beautiful. All of it.

TAGS: comfort me with apples, harvest, grapes & roses

Industry.

We were pretty industrious today. In fact, I think of this time of year as particularly industrious, what with the harvest--or in our case, the purchasing of other peoples' harvests--the provisioning and preserving of food, the cleaning out so that we can at least start ahead of the enclosing of everything when we hole up for the winter.

After we got back from the farmer's market, and we took Bruiser for a walk, and the historian went for a bike ride and I contemplated my options, we got to work. The historian worked away in the backyard, trimming and cutting back, while I pulled out some of the baskets and boxes that have been collecting rejection letters, magazines, old greetings from friends, bank statements for the children who are away, old agendas and notebooks. I threw away a huge amount of stuff, enough to make a dent in the rest of my accumulation, enough to make me realize that, if I had in mind to control the accumulation, I would need to spend regular time doing the same for, well, the rest of my life. I think some people call that "housekeeping." Am I signing up for it? Well, provisionally. Check back with me in awhile.

Bruiser was very watchful during all these activities. What with dogs living to the west and the east, he has a lot of policing to do. Not to mention the dangerous little old ladies, school children, and UPS trucks there are to announce. Doing his job, and very effectively, I might add.

After our labors, which are not finished and which will never be finished, we went to a family gathering at a park. My cousin and her husband recently adopted a boy from Ethiopia. She met him there when she was part of a humanitarian mission (she's a nurse). The gathering was so we could meet him. The weather and the light could not have been more beautiful. The kids played some soccer and some basketball, we all chatted and visited, and Will crawled around after a ball. These days, September and October in Utah, are some of the best days ever. It's like cherishing the last peaches or cherries or celebrating when the asian pear guy is at the market. It's brief, it's wonderful, it's going going gone.

(picture of Will taken by college daughter--thanks!)

Harbinger.

I know it and you know it: that rain spattering and the wind hollering is the end of summer a-calling. So add these items to your list of stuff to contemplate:

• No more white shoes, dresses or trousers after tomorrow (I know, no one cares about this but me, and actually, I don't even care about it, but just this morning, I read an article about it, and in the information-sharing spirit of this blog, I am passing this time-honored style principle to you. You're very, very welcome.). Also, possibly, no more white gloves, but no one but maybe Brooke Astor ever cared about that in about fifty years.
• It's still tomato season for a few more weeks.
• There are still peaches.
• Awesome walking and bike-riding weather for several weeks.
• Sweaters.
• Less swamp cooler usage.
• Also, time to send out your manuscripts again! If you have manuscripts, send them out--it's time!
• Sleep with more covers on, which for some reason, I always find terribly comforting.
• Pumpkin pie is in your future.
• More baking in general.
• Every season that passes is an index for how much closer I am--you, too!--to old age, decrepitude, and death.

See? So many reasons to be cheerful.