It’s fall but it doesn’t feel like it. The air is heavy and humid when it should feel crisp, should feel cool. I’m still drinking beers in bars with thick brick walls while wearing wilted t-shirts and soccer shorts.
But I miss my jackets made with hard denim and weathered leather and fur. I want to take my morning coffees warm and with cream. I want plasma-red apples and piping hot pies with a viscous sugar center. I want to adorn my neck with green blue scarves and leave my windows open for the day.
I want all of these things, but really, I want autumn. I’m so sick of summer, and yet, the void tells me to take my time, to get used to October’s new face, its artifice all unnatural and plastic.
How will you dress for Halloween this year? My neighbor asks me. I dog-ear my page in Mona Awad’s Rouge. Behind him I spot a yellow spider inching across its intricate web home. I can’t think of absolutely anything to be but myself.
I’m self-soothing through the slowness of seasonal change and waiting patiently for the next burnt orange leaf to fall onto my stoop. Thankfully, I have art, that old friend, to situate me in the in-between, in this sunny mosaic of space and time. Here is what’s helping as of late.
1. Someone Who Isn’t Me by Geoff Rickly is fantastic. It’s also the first release under the new independent press Rose Books, founded by Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I’m Someone Else.
2. Dear Friend is a wonderful place to browse secondhand books, peruse art magazines, and drink coffee if you find yourself in Brooklyn.
3. For a fresh take on ambient sound, listen to composer and musical artist Kelsey Lu. She most recently scored the Sundance Film Festival hit, Earth Mama.
4. If you need a new notebook, these oversized, whimsical journals are sturdy, lined, and my favorite.
5. Broccoli, the print magazine exploring all things cannabis, just dropped their latest issue. In it, I wrote about a group of athletes who like to run while stoned.
6. Poet Safiya Sinclair recently published her memoir, How To Say Babylon, which has been compared to Tara Westover’s Educated. It’s lovely and reads like a novel.
7. I recently watched Under the Silver Lake starring Andrew Garfield. Disturbing, bizarre, mysterious, and worth the watch.
8. This poem by Amanda Larson published in Cake Zine.
9. Finally, I loved this interview with writer McKenzie Wark in passerby.