I love autumn.
To me, it is the most sensual season of the year. The smell of ripe
blackberries, roasting peppers, and the warm baking spices—nutmeg, cinnamon,
ginger and cloves. Biting into a crisp, sweet apple—the sound of the crunch.
The slant of light that stretches shadows of buildings and tree trunks. The
skittering swirl of dry leaves down the sidewalk.
It’s harvest
time, which, as a writer, is often when a piece of work that I’ve been growing,
nurturing, fully focused on for the past year is finally ready to send out in
the world. Which also means its time to start something new. And for me, the
best place to start is with the senses. Because the senses, more than anything
else, evoke emotion.
Many years ago,
a wonderful writing teacher gave me a simple writing exercise that was
transformative, opening a portal into deep and emotional memory. Part
meditation and part writing, the exercise simply required sitting quietly and
going back to some moment in childhood, then connecting to it through the senses.
I remember closing my eyes and finding myself standing in a dirt lane in front
of a patch of blackberry brambles. The air had a crisp edge but the low sun was
warm on the back of my head and the brambly smell of sun on the fruit and
leaves and stems and the taste of warm, ripe blackberries was vivid. But it
also carried a melancholy note, a feeling of loneliness that the sensual memory
brought back from my childhood.
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| Illustration by Molly Brett |
Why blackberry
brambles? There seems to be an archetypal element to them—they show up in many
fairy tales and fables. Sleeping Beauty’s castle sleeps beneath an overgrowth
of brambles, Rapunzel’s prince falls out the tower window, gouging his eyes out
in the bramble bushes, Children’s picture books are full of them. Perhaps it’s the prickles, the
thorns that one has to endue to get at the sweet fruit. The universal lesson
that the pursuit of pleasure comes with some pain along the way. The concept of
risk and reward. Of sacrifice for harvest.
Some people say
you should not pick wild blackberries after September 29th,
Michaelmas, or you’ll risk running into the devil. The story goes that when the
archangel Michael kicked Satan out of heaven on that day, the devil landed in a
patch of blackberry brambles and so now every year he gets his revenge by
spitting (some say peeing) on them, making them inedible. Whether or not you
choose to believe the story, it is a good idea to pick your berries by the end
of September before they shrivel into dry, brown seedy bumps.
With that in
mind, my daughter and I walked through the Presidio yesterday gathering about
half a gallon of berries between us. We both got pricked but it was worth it.
The afternoon was also a lesson in patience and quiet observation worth noting
for other ventures. Like writing. Over
and over I would be certain I’d picked every ripe berry from the patch I was
foraging (and why is it that the sweetest, plumpest berries always seem just
out of reach?) but then after looking up at the fog pouring in over us, and
getting ready to move on, I would see a whole cluster I had missed. They’d been
there all along—right in front of my eyes, but somehow I hadn’t seen them. Kind
of like a piece of writing that isn’t quite working—you get ready to abandon it
but give it one last glance and see the connections that were missing. Right
there before your eyes.
This morning, I
had a big bowl of berries for breakfast—they tasted like sunshine and the last
of summer’s sweetness. And a little bit melancholy. Which I actually like.
Autumn is the melancholy season, which is another reason it’s my favorite
season.
What do love
most about autumn?
Take Good Care,
Sharry
Love love love this. Mmmm.
ReplyDeleteBlackberries have always meant the end of summer to me. My best friend and I always picked them right before school started.
Gorgeous meditation here.
Dear Sharry:
ReplyDeleteMy name is Phyllis Peters, and I am an author whose upmarket, comedic novel, Untethered: A Caregiver’s Tale, is about a group underrepresented in humor: caregivers. I write with some expertise in this field. As I change my parents’ Depends, flee screaming from Social Security officers, and enjoy my own ongoing nervous breakdown, I would consider it a thrilling diversion to have you review my work.
With over 30 million, mostly baby-boomer adults in the US alone currently giving care, Untethered: A Caregiver’s Tale naturally plays to a built-in audience and to anyone who loves a fun but thoughtful read. Tom is a workaday administrator and proud boomer. His recent divorce has just ended in marriage to Mel—a sexy, younger French colleague—as he begins caring for his aging and increasingly difficult parents. When his formerly upstanding dad gets arrested for assault with an old dial phone, Tom tries to persuade his parents to sign over their power of attorney, to stop driving, or to take up a comparatively safe hobby like genital tattooing.
Denial, however, becomes Tom’s most powerful adversary. With Mel’s desire for children proving a game changer, with his pot-smoking, French great-grandmother-in-law moving in, and with his elderly neighbors challenging his very sense of self, Tom escapes into magical thinking. Buying into local lore sends him searching for real buried treasure, but meaningful, emotional treasure proves much more elusive.
Untethered: A Caregiver’s Tale is full-length fiction as comic relief. It is the modern family at its funniest and most vulnerable, offering cathartic fun aimed not at the caregiven, but in praise of the caregiver.
My fiction and articles have appeared in literary journals, online publications, and magazines such as The Pinch, The Ampersand Review, and Munich Found. I have also written screenplays, formerly represented by the Warden McKinley and Michael H. Sommer Literary Agencies.
At your convenience, I would like to have my PR agency forward you the materials of your choice (complete manuscript, sample chapters, jacket blurb, and press kit available). Please also visit the Untethered website at www.untetheredcaregiver.com. The site will steer you to our Indiegogo campaign, which outlines the book’s direct involvement in raising money toward Alzheimer’s research.
I look forward to your response. Thank you for your time and your imagination.
Sincerely,
Phyllis Peters