What Medium Would You Wish To Be Drenched In?
Finding purpose and intention in the waning summer days
“August rain: the best of summer
gone, and the new fall not yet born.
The odd uneven time.”
~Sylvia Plath
A few leaves began dropping off of the magnolia tree behind our apartment this week. Its blossoms are usually one of the first signs of spring, arriving with the crocuses and the warblers when warm days are still just fleeting glimpses at the end of winter. Every year I forget how early the large, white blooms show up. And then I forget again how early its leaves signal the first hint of fall, as a few begin to yellow in late August and drift to the ground. Most of the branches are still lush with leathery green right now, and the birds are still chasing each other from perch to perch. But the slight dappling of yellow is hinting at the cooler months to come.
I always find the last weeks of August a little destabilizing in both welcome and anxious ways, so this is something of an annual note, I guess. Though fall has always been my favorite time of year for all its cozy intimacies, it also signals the passage of time differently than any other season. While spring reminds us that everything renews itself, fall grounds us in impermanence. It’s a time of letting go, marked very viscerally by the ebbing of the most vivid signs of life and growth in the world around us. Having spent basically my entire life in education, as a student and then as a teacher, fall also means letting go of the long, slow, unencumbered days of summer break and returning to routines, check lists, and alarms. The structure is always reorienting once it arrives. But, in the weeks leading up to September, the impending return of order and expectations feels tinged with hints of loss each year.
As a parent, fall makes the passage of time particularly undeniable, with the beginning of each new grade marking the inevitability of growth and change, which is both exciting and unnerving to witness. My son starts high school this fall. This blows my mind. Nearly every stage of parenting is infused with the odd sensation of possibility mingled with loss. But this feeling is especially palpable in adolescence. We have conversations now that are often indistinguishable from those I would have with another adult. It is undeniably thrilling to observe the beginnings of this new stage of life unfolding—more so than I expected, if I'm honest. And, at the same time, it’s become almost impossible to see the traces of the round-cheeked child who sat in my lap and cupped my face in his chubby hands so recently. Even as I relish the sophisticated dialogue we have now, I miss the intimacy and the silliness of the conversations we had then, too. Astutely thoughtful observations and clever quips have slipped in where wonder and belly giggles used to be. This surprises me in the same way the changing magnolia leaves do.
Spring and summer are expansive. Their unfurling makes hope feel easy in an almost hallucinatory way. Possibility is made real and visceral all around us through no effort of our own, as the seasons blossom lusciously. But the unencumbered quality of this wide and effortless time is also nonspecific. Spring and summer offer growth that asks little of us in return. By contrast, I think fall invites a different kind of hope—one that is a little grittier and more internal, but that also has the potential to be more purposeful. We have to hold more tightly to hope, as we ease into fall and then into winter. While so much of the natural world moves toward hibernation, we’re left to set our course with greater intention and determination. The “odd uneven time” between summer and fall in these final weeks of August somehow holds both feelings simultaneously. The days are still bursting with color and fullness, but signs of the changes to come whisper among the late blooms and blades of grass.
It was 91 degrees and humid in New York today. I think the mockingbirds that have been hopping around the magnolia tree’s boughs outside my window are still juveniles. Their exuberance makes them a little clumsy. They visibly ready themselves for flight before launching off each branch to chase each other through the leaves. The smooth ease of adult flight, which they will have mastered by the time the air actually cools, isn’t entirely coordinated yet. The days are still long but they’re growing shorter.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the poet, Andrea Gibson. Their particular gift—and I think the reason they spoke to so many people in a way that felt both intimate and universal—was a capacity to hold tenuousness and transition in all aspects of life, and to find purpose within uncertainty. I’ve been thinking about their poem, “Evolution,” this week, as the end of summer encroaches.
“Build yourself as beautiful as you want your world to be.
Wrap yourself in light then give yourself away with your heart, your brush, your march, your art, your poetry, your clay.
And for every day you paint the war, take a week and paint the beauty.
The color, the shape of the landscape you’re marching towards.”
Spring and summer hand us sunlight and rich, bold colors. The world explodes with life and tells us, in no uncertain terms, what it will create. As fall approaches, though, and nature retreats, we’re handed the baton and it becomes our responsibility to decide what we will create in the darker, cooler days ahead. We become more accountable for wrapping ourselves in light, as the sun grows increasingly reclusive. I think these late summer days invite us to start sketching, so we’ll have a sense of our task when the rest of the leaves begin to fall.
As I consider the intentionality and purpose that this transition asks, as well as Gibson’s call to “wrap ourselves in light,” I’m also reminded of a quote I heard years ago (and now can’t find) about an artist who said that he hoped to die drenched in his medium. I’ve always loved this image—immersed in imagining and making, immersed in the process of “shaping the landscape you’re marching toward," and perhaps most importantly immersed in the practical material of making your imaginings real. It feels full of intention and grit, possibility and utility.
When I think about this image, my mind always conjures a memory of the sculptor, Simon Verity, who was a neighborhood fixture in my childhood. His wild, unruly hair and rumpled clothing were forever dusted in the powder of the stones he carved. There was something beautiful and aspirational about the way in which he was so vividly connected to the process of his art and of executing a vision only he could fully see. At times, he almost seemed to be one of the figures that he released from the hard edges of their stone encasements through his persistent chipping, as the crevices of his skin were lined with the same grey minerals that gave them shape and a feeling of life.
Most of us are not gifted with the singularity of purpose, medium, and form that either Andrea Gibson or Simon Verity possessed. Nonetheless, I think it is a useful prompt, particularly in these waning days of summer and in the turbulent times in which we live, to consider what it might mean for each of us to “wrap ourselves in light then give ourselves away.” What medium would you choose to die drenched in? Paint, soil, stone, words? What version of the future are you marching toward, and how might you release that possibility from whatever keeps it encased and give it life?
As the green leaves fade and we shift into the season of looking inward, setting our direction, and defining our own path, what transformations do you envision? Spring, after all, is the result of metamorphosis not its occurrence. Change happens during the quiet time that precedes the visible evidence of growth.
The writer, Katherine May, says,
“That’s the gift of winter: it’s irresistible. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We can come out of it wearing a different coat.”
The chill isn’t in the air yet. We still have some time left for soaking in the light that is offered to us by long, warm days. Most of the leaves are still green. This is the moment to breathe in, to acknowledge the transitions that await even when they might feel tinged with loss, and to imagine what we might do with the months ahead. What medium will you drench yourself in? What future will you paint? And what transformation will you enact?
We are living through a period of rapid and often frightening change. We need those who can envision metamorphosis and embody a future worth hoping for now more than ever. And the work of imagining and enacting transformation falls to each of us in our own way. Part of the task of bringing the world we wish for into being involves challenging ourselves to picture that world. And part of the task lies in knowing which medium compels us, as we get to work expressing and bringing about all that we imagine.
In the weeks ahead, even as the headlines continue to unfold quickly and fiercely, and as all the to-dos and day-to-day requirements renew their autumnal hold, I hope you will find a few moments to absorb the fullness of these last days of summer, to contemplate what you will create in the more sparse and purposeful months ahead, and to determine what medium you might drench yourself in so that you can “paint the shape of the landscape you’re marching toward.”
Wishing you all the light and time that the end of summer has to offer as well as increasing clarity of vision and purpose, as you head toward cooler days,
Alicia
A few things I found helpful and hopeful this week…
- Hooray for clean waterways and all the life they bring!
- If paddling the pristine Hudson River isn't the best way for you to get around, the subway is also awesome and not scary (really).
- A guide for educators and school staff working with immigrant children
- Support DC in its right to self-govern
- Printable local guides to responding when ICE shows up
