It’s the time of year when I start to notice the light turning. It creeps in, a little at a time, as change tends to.
Historically, I’ve felt unmoored by this change. The darkness feels personal, like a bartender kicking me out before I’ve finished my last drink.
When I was a kid, I used to be afraid of the dark, not because it scared me, but because it reminded me that I had to sleep, and I haven’t always had an easy relationship with sleep.
I remember lying awake at sleepovers, wondering when the torture would end. From a logical perspective, I was confident in the idea of mornings. And yet a child’s sense of time is warped. A night is an eternity.
Later, I discovered sleep hygiene, though there have certainly been periods where I’ve struggled for hours each night, contemplating every mistake I’ve made. In the darkness, problems amplify, or maybe during the day, we’re just too busy to remember them.
September is a bittersweet month for me. It’s the anniversary of my wedding and the occasion of many dear friends’ birthdays, including my husband’s.
It’s also the month that my father died, the fall when I was 14, and I will always associate the change of the light with death and with the many hard months and years afterward, years I kept myself busy with school during September, hunkering down with my work, so I didn’t have to face the darkness.
This September, I find myself especially torn between feelings. On the one hand: facing the pit of grief that I always feel dangerously close to falling into this time of year. One wrong step and I will be consumed! This is one of the myths of grief, I’ve learned in my time studying its psychological manifestations. We believe if we allow ourselves to feel it, we will never escape its clutches, not realizing that the avoidance itself is what creates the sense of bottomlessness.
At the same time, for the first time in what feels like years, I feel especially hopeful about the future (I know! How?) I work with high school students on a daily basis now, and they give me a lot of energy. We talk about their hopes and dreams. Some of them even read books and still write longhand! The kids are alright, I promise.
If only there were a poem to capture the strange duality of this time!
This is Louise Glück from her collection Averno, which I bought at the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm last autumn.
As many of my loyal readers know, Glück is one of my favorite writers (nay, thinkers!) in the world, and her poems are always a salve to me.
I remember this poem in particular standing out to me upon first read, but at the time, I didn’t look up the term maestoso, doloroso, and not being a musician, I wasn’t aware that it translated to something like “Majestic and sorrowful.” It’s a cue to communicate two feelings at once: pain and grandeur.
Of course, this poem captures that tension exactly. It can’t make up its mind.
Middle C has turned darker now.
So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate.
The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful.
I find the last two stanzas especially affecting:
How privileged you are, to be still passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.
This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us
Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
still believing in something.
Is there a way to appreciate darkness without becoming hopeless or cynical?
I think so, but I’m still learning how. I just finished reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s masterpiece, The Left Hand of Darkness. The title comes from a quote in the text that speaks to this balance:
"Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers…like hands joined together, like the end and the way."
Many Taoist philosophers have said something similar, and I think it’s a good attitude to have heading into the fall and winter, which are not only seasons of darkness but also a time to reflect, recharge, and move inward with the knowledge that we won’t live there forever.
Love this reflection on autumn, Sophie.
In the Sierras the contrast between summer and fall is striking. The light is less bright, there are fewer birds and the wildflowers are gone. It’s as if nature is holding its breath before the oncoming winter storms. But the aspen tress glow and quake, as if in defiance of what is to come.
I want to be like the aspen tress. 😊
for the past week - every time i open substack - your profile is suggested to me - sometimes multiple times in a sitting.
i finally decided to just give in to the gods of the stack.
and im glad i did - this was a lovely post!