I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.
Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing: when both have fallen in love but still haven't said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.
― Tove Jansson
I decided to post two different posts this week—I have such a mix of feelings that it feels like I need separate containers for them all—for the rant and the gratitude, the rage and the beauty.
I had started an essay—or really a list—of quotes from a book by Stephanie Coontz—whose work is fantastic but always rage-inducing. I had to take it in spoonfuls so that I didn’t start throwing things, trying to turn myself down to a simmer so that I didn’t explode. We learn about history—the misogyny-the racism-the exploitation-the capitalism—but when you read the specifics—and how specific they truly are—it takes my breath away. I have a hard time finding a way to channel my rage other than…write, rant, and try to think of how to live a life without going mad from running into what seems a perpetual brick wall.
My brother-in-law was visiting over the weekend and it became rather clear that he is not as accustomed to witnessing my rantings, often at night, when I get ticked off by something. This one night we watched something that talked about Picasso and…I went off about Picasso. My brother-in-law is an artist and he loves Picasso, but I was like o hell no, he was such a misogynist! The women he exploited! The girls he exploited…but my brother-in-law first fell in love with cubism, so it was going to be a hard sell. As we were arguing, jokingly but seriously, M said to him welcome to my world! and I was like o yeah—it’s misogynist o’clock! Time for a rant! and well yeah…I collapsed laughing because it….tracks.
So the other post is a type of misogynist o’clock rant—or rather, a stating-the-facts list of misogyny in this country that is so bald-faced and recent that I can’t help but want everyone to know about this history when there is an opportunity to share.
A friend of mine recently wrote about the Boarding schools that so many Indigenous children were exiled to, their identity, culture, and lives violently taken from them. In the essay, he asked his readers when they had first learned about the schools, which are now more prominently in recent headlines, with recovery work finding more evidence of those lost lives. I was surprised—and appreciated the honesty—that so many of his readers commented they first learned about the schools reading his newsletter.
So much of what we learn and know we bear witness to, and it’s so vital and important—it’s possibly the only reason we are all here if there is one—to bear witness. And yet we also need to share what we learn as widely as possible—to bear witness with one another. That so many are trying their damnedest to ban, obscure, forbid the learning of history—a.k.a. what has been done in the name of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy—is more to the point in how urgent it is that we share what we learn and read with one another. It’s powerful. It effects anger, and anger affects change. And the world desperately needs change.
But I can’t only post the angering statistics and facts—because it is still autumn in Alaska. And it’s been such a gorgeous fall. The yellow ochre amber leaves have left with the wind in the space of a couple of days. The tundra on the mountains turns more crimson with each hour it seems, lichens exposed in the higher altitudes lining the contrast. The chickadees, boreal chickadees, nuthatches, Steller’s jays, magpies, woodpeckers, and a squirrel are busier than usual, collecting the nuts I’ve laid out for them. The chickadees, looking like small feathered blooms on the ends of the now bare branches as they wait their turn to dive.
It is night in the morning again, and I can feel it in my bones, a reluctance to leave the warmth of the bed in the morning, despite a rare restful night of sleep. The sky turning slightly red with the rise of the sun as the mountains become more visible on the drive to take my son to school. Everything feels like it is in a heightened state of preparation, an excitement at the familiarity of the coolness in the air, the trees nearly ready for snow, now that the leaves will not be at odds with gravity if it should come early.
And swans—pairs that always visit a nearby pond for just the space of a few days at this time of year—added their cloud shapes in contrast to the inky dark of the water, and the few gold leaves that cling stubbornly to the cottonwoods, the colors becoming more bold and stark as the landscape drifts into monochrome. All day I could hear the swans’ low calls to one another, catching glimpses of them flying silently across the trees as I let the dogs out again, their long necks stretched as if pulling a seam to close the shift from autumn to winter.
I’ve had such a love-hate relationship—more often hate, really (although that sounds a bit harsh)—with this place for so many years, I find myself surprised at how much real love I find myself having for the place, the land, the mountains right now. I think I love it here—I keep feeling a sense of gratitude for this place, the animals that live alongside us, the lands on which we live. I’ve felt that for other places, but it’s a new feeling for me, to feel affection and love for this place. Maybe I just needed to slow down to see it on terms I could recognize, not follow along with other ideas of it, or be pulled into it in ways that others chase after it. I don’t really know. But I’m grateful for the autumn, the coolness, the blaze of color before the steadiness of the black and white shadows of winter. The rains that accompanied the end of summer this year. All of it makes me want to rant in an opposite direction—one that is based in appreciation, not anger (!).
So I’m posting two sides of a coin, the gratitude and the anger. I’ll post the rant tomorrow. There is time for both, and it’s doubtless what helps to temper the rage and instead simmer in the fall surroundings, take solace in the long view of time the mountains offer.
To be on the way
What a beautiful series to explore both rage and beauty while gasping at the northern autumn. I long to see with my own eyes what I only read and experienced about autumn through your lyrical epiphanies 🍁
Thank you Freya, I loved this post and I will be there for the other side of the coin tomorrow. I was moved to write about your post here: https://annakime.com/2022/10/10/recommending-the-ariadne-archive/ I hope that’s ok.