seasonal reading

autumn approaches. the heat, by infinitestimal degrees is letting us slide from its greasy palm. Oktoberfest and other fall seasonally brewed beers are popping up, with redandgold leaves on their boxes, so we're clear that what's inside that box, those bottles, is meant to be tied to certain changes in atmosphere.

19 years ago someday recently, I didn't wave at my grandfather when we drove by. He was moving the yard, I think there was a tropical storm in the Gulf, and later that night he died.

fall is determined to be a descent, a transition, a doorway. Spring too, these threshold seasons, for some reason summer and winter are fixed. understood. The rest of the time is a cosmic road trip between solstices. Northrop Frye isolates the time in the cultural imagination as that of "sunset, autumn and death...of the dying god...and sacrifice and of the isolation of the hero." The "traitor and siren" rule this late afternoon to sunset time, which makes it sexy and treacherous, yet the heat makes it insufferable. At this time, the knees of the strongest wobble, the hearts of the bold murmur, and the sweat rises easily to the skin. It will be glorified; however, just a little later in the day. And so we've got faded golden Ulysses, our idle king sighing at comfortable hearthside and deciding the afternoon was so glorious; remember when they reveled in the heat and labor? Fuck it he says, let's get the band back together.
However, of course the paraphrase lacks much that the real thing features. In honor of the afternoon, a little Tennyson:
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

-- Ulysses

And so tarry a moment on the beers with the leaves on the labels. Revel in the heat. We'll be hearthside soon enough.