The Birdcage Archives

Tuesday 26 October 2021

In View: October

Hello Gentle Reader,
 
Few months are as memorable as October. When it comes to seasons, Spring and Summer conveniently entwine themselves. The renewed green of spring leaves taking on new highlights of flowers blossoming into view, while summer enriches the world in its oppressive embrace, which the youth appreciate as they approach the twilight of carefree and freedom that only they can occupy. Those last days of summer. Those lazy days of golden rays on the beach, as the day dies down into a brilliant explosion of extinguishing colours of the sunset. A far cry from April, whose dreary ashen etched depiction and disposition are overcast and unappetizing. On the contrary, September is one of the most distinct and beautiful months when it comes to grace as a virtue. By the halfway mark of September there is a noticeable adjustment in the light. It's receding. The foliage is aware, and as if in festivity or customary they begin to change. They slip out of the youthfulness of green and abandon flowers. There's juvenila to that colour, a hallmark of a different age and time. A freshness to its shade; now out of step with the season. Such callow vigorous endeavours are tossed aside and replaced with the maturation of the season of bounty and harvest. As the daylight pulls back further the leaves begin to turncoat. Some places it's a barrage of harvest colours on chameleonic display. The temporary burning in a kaleidoscope of yellow, gold, orange and red, as well as sprinkled within the shy green. The gold is a personal favourite. The larches, a paradoxical conifer, behaves with deciduous delight and changes its colour come September. An imposter if anyone ever saw one. A turncoat. A traitor. Yet, regardless of the accusations leveraged against the tree, it adorns itself with golden needles. Amongst the stoic and the strong evergreen who remain perpetual, eternal, and everlasting; the larch plays the role of the phantom within the wintergreen shadows, brilliantly lighting up like salt amongst the pepper, and then fading come the onslaught of winter. By October though the regalia is through. Some gilded leaves hang on, but their maturation has come, and they are discarded from the tree with carefree abandonment. In the introductory weeks of October, they rejoice in their newfound freedom. In the wind's casual visits, they scatter up the street and tumble down it. They scurry in scratches along the pavement. All the while a change is taking place.
 
By mid-October the regalia—the gold, the glitz, the glamour—have all worn away. The plating of September's golden leaves becomes tarnished like unpolished silver. What leaves remain on the now absent minded and barren trees, papery flick in the wind, defiant in their resolve, while pathetic in their singular shiver. Those on the ground have gotten themselves clogged in drains or crowded against fences. Their brilliance drained. All that remained of their former golden glory, was the doe-coloured husks they had become now. Beige ghosts. The entire world had begun to extinguish itself into this indistinguishable state. Hollowing itself out into a lifeless carapace of fawn. The fields were scrapped bare. All that remained were rows and fields of stalks, a 5' O'Clock shadow. The richness of the spring seed and the summer growth now reduced to scruff and stubble. Perhaps October is that weary man of a month. Down on his luck. His shoes, worn to the sole. His coat, moth eaten. He's lost his hat. His shirt and trousers are filthy. His eyes are red, sunken and weary. His face is covered in stubble and scruff, which means his character is brought into question. He's a decent man at heart; the circumstances are just unfortunate. This fact alone does not elicit empathy or understanding. Doors shut and curtains close. No vacancy. No room. No time. In the park the shrubbery and topiary have all but taken to abandoning whims and departed. This leaves him otherwise exposed. Unwanted, unwelcomed and now exposed. Still, in a thicket of bare branches, he'll be found. Cradled in their gnarled scaffolding, beneath the night sky, overtaken with clouds and polluted orange like cataract from urbanization. October is a month of melancholic understanding. There is a darkening in the days. A redaction in light. An absence in generosity and spirit. It lacks the sourness and dour cruelty of April; but unlike April it doesn't have the same hope residing at the end of the calendar days. October is the month of begrudged acceptance of harsh realities, longstanding resentments, and buried regrets. Everything is to be exhumed, excavated and examined. Come to terms with it as they are, as they were, and as they always will be.
 
In a literary context October brings to mind a select few poets; though the most recent one to slink out of the shadows, who walks within the crunch of disposed leaves, is none other than Louise Glück, the laureate of the month herself. Her austere poems recall the autumnal tones, with her exacting eye for truth-telling, if to the most fastidious degree. There is mourning, there is resentment, there is bitterness and of course outright contempt. In a palate of paints which depict the world with a grisaille perspective, one can’t help but notice within the edges and details, a sliver of mauve or a stroke of russet. In her poem “All Hallows,” the fields are reaped to stubble, while the days retreat and the nights expand with gluttonous glee. The moon in turn rises with dichotomous airs, bringer of the harvest or perhaps instead pestilence. While the soul in turn is lost in a landscape reaped barren and on the verge of being swept into dusk. Through payment of time and place, this woman (a wife) beckons forth (or pleads) the soul to come hither, to bring company into those lonely nights which are both settling and yet to come. Perhaps an obliging soul does come, creeping out of the tree, laid waste by the season and the month, who will slink home and find refuge in the arms that have opened wide to greet and comfort it.  Then of course there is the poem: “October,” about the poet marveling at her age, and the changes befallen the garden, such as the ivy whose expansive ambition is to now overtake the southern wall. “October,” is praised for its directness, its stark nature, and of course the austerity and crystalline measure in which Louise Glück examines with exactitude the circumstances and emotional events taken place and taking place.
 
On the contrary there’s Emily Brontë’s bewitching poem: “Fall Leaves Fall,” which truly conjures the sensation and understanding: the season of the witch. In the opening lines of the poem, Emily Bronte creates a chant to herald the oncoming winter, but first October reigns. She entices leaves to fall and banishes the former reigning flowers to get on with the business of death. Emily draws forth the night and seeks to cap the day. Without a sense of regret, not even a hint of disappointment she welcomes autumn into the world, and in the zenith of October, scoffs at the departing season of Summer, where she sweeps it from the doorstep in a whirlwind of leaves. With grace there is thanks to the harvest, but in the end with the moon unencumbered or hidden behind trees crowned with leaves, Emily stands accused in its pooling light, charged with the crimes of willing and enticing the end of the brighter seasons, and plaguing the world with October’s callous resentment. Each night, Emily the fierce and capricious, by lantern light wills the nightly decay to welcome further dreary October days. All the while, all the must do is herald to her earlier chants and fall. Abandon their limbs and branches and succumb to the changing season. Where roses rule, may snow succeed and chill the world to sleep.  
 
By the end of October, the nights are fended off with the faint flickers of candlelight. Wisping in the maws of carved pumpkins, the line steps, decks, porches, windowsills and lawns. In a more grassroots time, the festivities would have marked the end of the harvest, and in doing so must take advantage and give thanks and celebrate. With bonfires, food and treats, there is a sense of this is it.  Up to this point it had been hard work: seeding, tending, weeding, and then harvesting; being at the mercy of the weather and hoping for a decent yield, to survive the winter. Now the landscape has assembled (as Glück states) and the fields have provided what they can, what they deemed owed. No matter, within reach of the flames, and in the gaze of hollowed eyes flickering with wistful wispy understanding, thanks is given. Its one of those few times when everything is laid bare, and still despite the poverty, despite the drudgery, despite the scraping and the uncertainty, tonight within the embrace of company, within the shadow of the flames, and beneath the grotesque gaping eyes of the makeshift jack-o-lanterns the share in the simplest pleasures of life, while ghouls and souls mingle this one night a year. This is what makes October memorable. It’s a month of celebrations that carries within itself ancient pagan rituals and rights, with modern embellishments (and commercial elements). There is the view of October. One clocked in the black of night and the orange jacklight. It’s a month of graceful aging and acceptance of harsh realities, setting aside longstanding grudges, and moving past those buried regrets. Beyond October lies November that Norway of a month with its pewter days.
 
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

No comments:

Post a Comment