October, when the leaves turn in on themselves and the golden light of eternity bows unto our heads. Oh, October!
I’ve often spoken fondly of the month we are now entering. It holds a special place in my heart for reasons words are perhaps incapable of describing, but we’ve made it. Summer is now behind us, and many are preparing and playing that waiting game until the snow starts flying.
Lately, I have felt compressed — our communal sense of normalcy is a shattered illusion. Comfort has become something in need of manifestation, but today I woke up and saw the sunrise and put my faith in the magic of the earth’s ancestral change.
In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” And perhaps that is what we need: a new beginning.
If Tuesday night’s presidential debate was an indicator of anything, it was that the political landscape in this country is far darker than anyone imagined. We knew it was bad, but after months of hyperbole, protest and division, watching two old men yell at each other for two hours played out like the third act in a Shakespearean tragedy.
I have been indirectly fighting off the feeling of apathy towards nearly every aspect of life that intersects with popular culture and the current climate of discourse. Instead, I have practiced focusing my attention on attention itself.
In my last column, I questioned the effect of now and how this year has become a sequestered version of reality. If October signifies anything to me, it would be a reawakening of the spirit, as if the jaw of the world drops open, allowing us to peer into her madness.
I know what you’re thinking: What am I saying, and why am I speaking in metaphors? It feels as if we’ve reached the point where only metaphors will do. There is nothing, no more words left to write that can make any more sense of what’s going on than those that have already been spilt. We crossed the line and drifted into lunacy long ago.
Perhaps all that is left to do is let the world start all over again and pray we make it to November. I have nothing left to offer anybody except my own confusion.
Turn off the phone, leave everything behind, set your alarm, wake up and walk outside while it’s still dark. Close your eyes, and listen to the world wake up. Silence, the long slow silence of this one big, vast awakened thing.
It might not seem practical to speak about the scenery of now in such a romantic way, but that is exactly what October asks us to do. To wake up and see the world through the eyes of a lover, to remember what it is we are fighting for, to forget the craziness of everyday life and look at the world through a child’s eyes and the sudden amazement of what we’re doing here.
We can turn on or tune in to any news outlet and be reminded of the everyday situation of the year that is 2020, but every so often, we need to look around and put our attention into the simple reality of being here right now.
When I sat down to write this column, there was nothing on my mind — what most people would call writer’s block — but I looked at the calendar, and it told me tomorrow was October. A new month, a new day. I let it take hold of me.
Attention is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. Each day, our awareness is captured by millions of different things, and what we choose to focus that attention on is how we shape and frame our state of mind. There is no reason why we can’t pause and focus on the subtle reality that today is simply what it is. Another day, and another opportunity to pay witness to the world.
After Tuesday’s debate, I felt entirely apathetic. I continued my day and went to sleep, but when I awoke and walked out my front door and saw the sunrise as I got in my truck to head to work, I stopped and told myself to smile.
There are no answers to questions of the future. Only time will write that story. The tools that are at our disposal for figuring our way through this mess all rely on our approach to the everyday and a willingness to communicate and have conversations that benefit us to the best of our ability.
The Occasional column, which endeavors to bring new voices to the Aspen Daily News, appears in this space every other week.
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October 02, 2020 at 05:00PM
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