Time for Autumn

It's my favorite time of year, and is why I appreciated Morgan Meis' write up of the season with regards to Pieter Bruegel's painting "Return of the Herd." She begins:

The cool wind coming in from the north, the piles of dead leaves crunching under foot, the sun that hangs lower in the sky with each passing day. It is easy to forget that all these changes used to point to something. The approach of autumn was the transformation in a mode of life, moving us from the work of the last days of the harvest to the hunkering down in preparation for winter.

It is amazing, even now, how quickly the shift in seasons stimulates a transformation of mood. The mind is pulled along by forces lurking in the weather—in the sun and the moon, in the otherwise-unnoticed messages from the grass and the trees. We are changing, they say, and so shall you. You simply can’t feel the same on an autumn day as you might feel on one of those bright, intrusive days of early spring.

Poem of the Day

Loved this poem found on the Daily Dish:

Accept the things you cannot change:
the bleating clock,
the nightly go
—dog leash in tow—
around the block,

neural chemistry,
patchy hair,
a longing stare
and X-ray eye,

and the niggling fact
that things will stay
roughly this way,
to be exact.

Forgive the things you cannot have:
the supple bod,
taut undergrads,
a nicer pad,
long chats with God,

an older name,
your peers’ respect,
the oll korrect,
unbridled fame,

a sense of ease
in your own skin,
a lighter burden
by degrees.

The life you’d swap for on the train
(sight unseen)
is much like yours
though it appears
more green.

So, why this pain
that shorts the breath
and spoils your health?
You grow serene—

not yet, but after
your will resigns
a few more times
with heavy laughter.

- "Acceptance Speech" by David Yezzi

Quote of the Day

All investigations of Time, however sophisticated or abstract, have at their true base the human fear of mortality.

Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, p. 622

Where Your Taxes Go

An excellent breakdown.

Early Morning Browsing

This long, rambling blog is a bit of a mess, but it contains a lot of really interesting writing about where ideas come from, how to nurture them, and how these ideas are often treated in the marketplace (with a particular focus on Hollywood).

Here's a representative sample:

The big gaping difference between the amateur and the professional writer is not whether you make actual money off your words, but rather whether you understand the mechanism inside you that produces Ideas.

Pondering Hughes

I've been intreaqued by Ted Hughes' poetry ever since I listened to Pete Townshend's entertaining but deeply flawed Iron Man album, based in part on a Hughes children's story. I haven't followed through on this for various reasons, but I think that may be corrected sometime zoom: this blog makes his poetry sound just fascinating.
Any advice on where I should start?

Music Break

This music video of some kinda automated music machine is a lot of fun. Plus, it has a xylophone solo!