Autumn Soup Recipe

books, sounds, sights, stories I have recently enjoyed

Moebius

A horn of moon smiles behind the trees and it takes me a groggy moment, still sipping my first cup of coffee, to realize that overnight the final leaves have fallen. The sky is a black and white lattice of branches and rain cloud. A moment not of color or texture but contrast. Highs and lows. Darks and lights. The place where the pain polishes the beauty into gem brightness. This autumn moment when the architecture of the forest becomes uniquely visible has always felt “twinned’ with the self we confront in moments of extreme emotional torque: grief, distress, heartbreak, depression. The shape of our self denuded of its leaves finally shows us where we bent to accommodate another branch, where we permanently stooped into the wind.

I have come to respect these moments of emotional nudity. When we are naked not so much to other people, but under our own gaze. We withstand cold and pain and loss not decked out in our most jubilant greens, but totally stark: just trunk and calloused bark.

These are my favorite days for writing fiction. And I am writing fiction again. Another project. Its embers are in the sap and soil, protected from above ground frost. They may take all winter to break through and leaf. But I’m so glad to have another “beloved” after the completion of my last “romance” (the first book in a Tristan and Isolde series I hope will one day sell to a publisher).

In the meantime I want to share some recent things that have been adding flavor to my creative soup pot: