Early Fall
25 October 2025
When I started workshopping this post it was still early fall, but then I had a migraine for two days, and then a good amount of fatigue and achiness and fogginess after that. So it goes when you got chronic pain issues like I do. Learning to flow with it and not let it frustrate me is a constant practice. That's kind of how it's always been for me though. I was telling my partner that I remember having debilitating migraines even as a very young child (day care, early grade school) and just being completely incapacitated periodically. Experiences like that certainly trained me to endure discomfort, but I think the pendulum has swung too far because now, in my current life, I've been really trying to practice the opposite. Getting in touch with my feelings (feelings-- things you feel -- senses -- sensation -- sensory experience of all kinds -- touch sound sight smell taste -- the body -- being embodied) has been my game plan of this last year. I think I'm making good progress on it and I've really been practicing, but there's still been many times where someone will be like "Did you hear that noise?" and I'll be like "What noise?" because I will have just tuned it out. I also recently had this conversation with my mom where she told me that she realized that she never would let furniture actually support her body, but instead she would brace herself against it, and after much conscious effort she learned how to allow herself to relax into a couch or chair and trust that it would support her. I realized that I do the same thing, so I'm trying to be more aware of that as well. I'm trying to be aware of these things, taking in the information that comes from your senses and being an animal with a body, an animal that is a body[1], and that I'm not actually a disembodied consciousness piloting a hostile, robotic, mechanistic shell that's bent on fighting against my will. Transcending the false mind-body duality that's drilled into those of us who share the culture I was raised in.
Of course, believing the right things is different than actually practicing them, and reading about things is different than learning through experience. This has been something else that I've been rolling around in my mind a lot lately: the Armchair. I don't know if it's a cultural thing, or a me thing, or just a general human thing, but it's such an easy trap to fall into. Armchairing things to death. I know this practice is important, I've read a lot about it or watched YouTube videos about it, or I think about it a lot, and that's the same as actually doing it. But reading about working out is not the same as exercising. Watching someone else perform a craft is not actually crafting. Understanding the benefits of meditation is not the same as engaging in the practice. Being able to articulate the contradictions and harms of our economic system is not the same as doing something that materially benefits the people around you. The more aware I become of this phenomenon the more I see it everywhere. Having a violent sexual fantasy is not actually causing any harm to another person. Maybe these are just similar things that I'm just trying to draw a circle around, and not one big thing, and I can't help but feel like I'm getting lost in the weeds a little bit[2]. Either way, I have jumped back into the regular meditation practice, and light exercise in the mornings most days, (alongside more arcane practices), so that does feel like a positive change. I've also been journaling a lot more than I ever have in the past (though I still think I could bump that up quite a bit) and making a strong effort to record my dreams as much as possible, which has been fruitful in that I've had an increase in very intense dreams alongside more mundane dreams, and very few nightmares.
I've also been thinking a lot about Samhain, which fast approaches. I'm not a Wiccan[3], but for a long time I've observed the "wheel of the year" holidays like many other psuedo-neopagans do. It lets me mark the transitions between the seasons and the yearly cycles in my own way and sometimes it gets a little deeper and sometimes I don't have the "holiday spirit" so much. Samhain this year is maybe a bit of both. Usually, I like to dress up, but this year I don't have any ideas or inspiration or drive to create anything, I don't have any Hallowe'en parties to go to or anything like that, and, because I live in an apartment, there's almost never any children at my door getting candy (can't blame them for that one!). So maybe I'll just challenge my creativity by raiding my closet, we shall see. That being said, the themes of the holiday have been swirling around me. I had two deaths in the family recently, and I feel strongly that I want to acknowledge that somehow ritually this year, though as of right now I'm not sure what that will look like other than maybe lighting a candle, looking at old pictures, addressing them directly while the veil is thin. I also often try to make it over to the local cemetery around this time just to say hello, pay my respects, leave offerings, etc, so I think that will be a good idea as well. But yes, death, and letting go. It's normal for all things to end, and I try to keep this in my mind and not cling to things as much as possible, but it's very difficult lol. Change is the only way things can go, but I still resist it at every turn, while at the same time wishing that lots of things could be different! What's that about?
At this point last year, I was at the lake with many of my close friends, a wonderful time that quickly passed into legend among our group. And I began to get this feeling that it was time to "get serious" while the times were still good, so I can be prepared for the truly difficult times whose approach I feel coming. And much that I've already written in this post has kinda already spoken to that feeling. This feeling has been crystalizing since that moment. Well, I'm trying to do it but it's been very two steps forward, one step back, and yes, there is a lot that I have to let go of that comes right to the front of my conscious mind at this time of year of letting go. I believe I've already written about how losing my last living grandparents really made me begin to feel like the last thread connecting me to my childhood has been severed, especially as now I look at my parents and I begin to see people who are entering the last stage of their lives. It's all very melancholic. I'm also going to turn 30 at the end of the year, which is a big milestone, but from what I understand it looks a lot bigger when you're on this side than once you go through it. And some of the letting go is more physical, that is to say, I am still trying to move out of California and I have all this damn furniture to get rid of, some of which is in a really bad state of repair. I've felt very tempted to shave my head again as well...
I've also gone through more of the letting go process of my old job, which taught me a lot and which I enjoyed very much. As of right now, I'm still unemployed, which gratefully gives me more time to do this necessary reflecting and fixing of myself before I move forward, but I am at the point where I'm like "Okay can someone hire me now lol." I've had some interviews, but nothing has panned out at this time, which I guess means that it's not the right time or those aren't the right places for me. Then again, maybe it's a sign that I need to be leaning even harder into freelancing it, which kinda presents its own set of problems... that's a problem I'm still beginning to work out. At least, I know things could be a lot worse and I still have enough food to eat.
Lately I've also been getting into my music collection again. Most of the time I listen to music on YouTube, which is pretty profane all things considered, so I went through the trouble of digitizing all of my CDs (I have more than I thought!), and collecting new albums from various places, and putting all of that in one place. It's part of the training of the senses, in this case hearing :) And contrary to popular belief, I don't hate music, though I do feel very sensitive about it and I don't have the same experience with music that a lot of people have. It's a bit like fingerpainting surrounded by people creating fine oil paintings. I often go for days without listening to any music, which I'm told is unusual, but even then I still enjoy singing (which is good for the soul). But I practice listening and I listen to my little songs!
To wrap things up, I started taking a mythology class which has been very pleasant. It's six weeks of slow analysis on one specific Irish text. I took a class taught by the same woman before, back in the early part of the year, and she remembered me which made me happy :) For the first class, hardly anyone would participate in the discussion (though I did because like, I wanna get as much as I can from the class that I'm taking for my own enrichment) which was kind of torturous but the second class was much more balanced in that regard.
Well, kind of a melancholic and reflective post this time, which is appropriate for the season. If you read up to this point then thank you so much! I hope you have a wonderful autumn season, if that's the season where you are in temporaspace, and that you have no trouble at all letting go of what it is necessary to let go of, and that coming into that new open space comes many fabulous experiences.
[1]The very interesting book The Spell of the Sensuous (1996) by the animist philosopher David Abram talks a lot about this idea.↩
[2]I almost feel like a circle can also be drawn around Protestant sola fide and the idea that "being saved" gives you basically a blank check to behave however reprehensibly you want, but I can't quite get there. My Christian theological knowledge just isn't there, and I'm not a Christian, and maybe that's a whole different concept or I'm misinterpreting something, but I'll go ahead and leave this footnote in anyway lol↩
[3]As the old joke goes, I'm extremely devout, but nobody can figure out what I'm worshipping.↩