Bits and Pieces of Our Days

I can't let autumn go by without running my favorite seasonal quote:

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 


And so life is starting over, with fall routines, crisp weather and the realization that we still have too many summer clothes out. And Ramona has outgrown her fall/winter church shoes. Sigh.

"Don't be morbid, Karen ... you know where the nearest Target is."

******

Betsy started violin lessons. The teacher is sweet and wonderful and Betsy loves her already. I'm looking forward to hearing Bach in my living room soon. Or "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

*****

Anne-with-an-e is having some oral surgery this week. Urgh. Ugh. Arrgh. I'll be glad when it's over. I want life for my children to be perfect, always perfect. But, as they always remind me -- because I taught them so -- nothing on this earth is perfect. And that's why we have prayer and hope. And chocolate. And Bach. To keep pointing us to Perfection.

Poetry Friday: Mary Oliver and that Gatsby quote, of course

There are just too many quintessential poems for autumn and yes, I find myself repeating my favorites, and yes, I assume you don't mind (do you?), and yes, I need to share, along with this quintessential Mary Oliver, the quintessential Gatsby quote about autumn that I share every, single fall: 

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

 

So here we are. I'm being predictable again, fall is ushering in the crispness, and Mary Oliver is being her Mary Oliver-est. 

Song for Autumn
by Mary Oliver

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

....

(Read the whole thing here, at The Poetry Foundation.)

~~~~~~~~~~

The never-predictable, always delightful Jama Rattigan 

is hosting the Poetry Friday round-up this week at Jama's Alphabet Soup. 

(Photo courtesy of Jill Wellington at Pixabay.)

Poetry Friday: Absolute September

I have mixed feelings about this poem. Or perhaps, more accurately, I have changing feelings about this poem.

First of all, I love it. I read it just last month for the first time and loved it immediately.

But then I thought, "No! Wait! I didn't always feel this way about autumn. That final stanza -- the mention of melancholy? I don't feel melancholy at the approach of fall. I love fall!"

So, yeah, what about that? What about the way I always celebrate the onset of autumn with an energetic little happy dance? The way I've used this Gatsby quote on the blog almost every year since I started blogging:

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

I still love that quote (I will never stop loving Gatsby.) I still live that quote -- I continue to wilt every summer (my constitution does not appreciate heat and humidity) and am revived in the fall. Revved up in the fall.

But over the years, apparently, I have come to love summer in a way I didn't used to recognize, or fully appreciate. I couldn't see what summer really gave me. And I think I know now what it is.

In summer, Atticus is home. (And it's not just that he cooks, so stop thinking that right now.) In summer, we amble along, living a relaxed rhythm and reveling in the lack of outside pressures. It doesn't feel like an overstatement to say that we feel like we experience a tiny taste of heaven every summer -- in each other's company, in the way life feels in the summer, together. And I don't want to let that go. The older I get, the more I appreciate my summers with Atticus, and those tiny tastes of a world to come.

Is there some sort of painfully cliched dynamic at work, something about entering the autumn of my life and no longer appreciating the things about autumn that I used to celebrate because I can no longer afford to idealize the downward slope that is inherent in the season?

Maybe. Or maybe I just really, really love my summers with Atticus.


Absolute September
by Mary Jo Salter

How hard it is to take September
straight—not as a harbinger
of something harder.

Merely like suds in the air, cool scent
scrubbed clean of meaning—or innocent
of the cold thing coldly meant.

(Read the whole beautiful, glorious poem here, at The Writer's Almanac.)

~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round up is at Author Amok. 

Poetry Friday: As Imperceptibly as Grief, Emily Dickinson

Yowza, I missed two Poetry Fridays in a row! Where have I been? What have I been doing!? Let's see. Living (with caveats ... pandemic, you know), teaching, writing, baking (sans flour), prepping for the Catholic Moms' Summit, and trying to retrain my mind to really read a book. (Reading in the time of Covid ... whoosh, it's been a whole thing for me. Or rather, the lack of the thing. I have read far fewer books in the last six months than at any other time I can think of. I. Don't. Like. That.) 

Time to get back to my favorite thing to do on a Friday: share some poetry. 

And autumn is here! Autumn is here! Though we still have to deal with the torpor of a pandemic, at least the torpor of summer is folding in on itself. Yes, it's been hot here this week, but, hey, hot? Your days are numbered. 

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?" 

 "Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall." 

 ~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I don't think another Poetry Friday should pass without my sharing this one from Emily Dickinson. I've loved it for forty years. Or something like that. (The years tend to lapse away, imperceptibly, and it's hard to keep track anymore.) 

As imperceptibly as grief 

by Emily Dickinson 

As imperceptibly as grief

The summer lapsed away, —

Too imperceptible, at last,

To seem like perfidy.

A quietness distilled,

As twilight long begun,

Or Nature, spending with herself

Sequestered afternoon.

The dusk drew earlier in,

The morning foreign shone, —

A courteous, yet harrowing grace,

As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing,

Or service of a keel,

Our summer made her light escape

Into the beautiful.

~~~~~~~~~~

Jone Rush MacCulloch has the Poetry Friday round-up this week. 

Poetry Friday: (Maisy and) "Song for Autumn" by Mary Oliver

It's here. 

It's autumn.

It's my favorite time of year. 

It's my favorite quote about autumn: 

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

                        

 ~~ The Great Gatsby

It's my favorite kitten in autumn: 

Maisy on top of the world. 

Maisy making it incredibly hard for me to get anything done. 

Maisy, with no idea why we are applauding her very existence.

It's my favorite (okay, one favorite) Mary Oliver poem about autumn: 

Song for Autumn 

by Mary Oliver 

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now

how comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the

nothingness of the air and the endless

freshets of wind? And don’t you think

the trees, especially those with

mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep

....

(Read the whole thing here, at The Poetry Foundation.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

It's my favorite thing to do on a Friday: 

refer you to the Poetry Friday host: 

Visit Rose at Imagine the Possibilities for this week's beauty and goodness. 

Poetry Friday: Autumn and Gatsby and Crooker, Oh, My!

Well, apparently I have fallen down on a very important job. Every autumn, I weave this crisply perfect Fitzgerald quote:

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall." 

                               ~~ The Great Gatsby  

into a post. And I haven't done it yet. I share it because autumn is my favorite season, and although I can't normally say I have anything in common with Jordan Baker, I do share the conviction that autumn will never fail to revive me from my annual summer wilting (and complaining.)

Now I have shared the requisite (but never unwelcome) autumn quote, and will move on to requisite, always-welcome fall poetry.

This week, I've got Barbara Crooker, being her completely marvelous, Crookery self:

And Now it’s October
by Barbara Crooker

the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run
to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy
pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright
....

(Read the whole poem here, at The Writer's Almanac.)

~~~~~

Speaking of marvelous selves, Jama Rattigan, Queen of Marvelous Selves, is hosting the Poetry Friday round up today at Alphabet Soup.

(Photo courtesy of FreeImages.com.) 

Poetry Friday: G.M. Hopkins and (the usual suspect) a Gatsby quote

In my usual  melancholy, stop-the-party-I-want-to-get-off   happy-go-lucky way, I'm sharing a Gerard Manley Hopkins heartbreaker.

Aren't I fun in the fall?

But, just in case an existential crisis isn't your thing this morning, I have another beloved autumn offering, a quote I feel compelled to share nearly every, single year:

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

                                                ~~ The Great Gatsby 

I tend to bounce back and forth between mourning for Margaret and rejoicing in the crispness. How about you?

~~~~~~

For this week's round-up, get thee immediately to Library Matters. 

~~~~~~

Spring and Fall
to a young child

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

It Feels Like Autumn, Thus I Am Compelled To Post This Quote

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 

Why I love autumn

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The most wonderful time of the year

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby