A Brooding Season
I love the Fall. I love this melancholy season that evokes in me more emotion than any other time. I love the windy days and the clear crisp skies and the floating leaves, burrowed hands in coats, chin hidden in scarves, and ruddy cheeks. It leaves me in parts both invigorated and remote. It makes me feel alive and it makes me brood. And today is a brooding day in this, a brooding season.
It's a day like today when I crave aloneness. When I want to find myself wrapped in a blanket, alone on the beach in Santa Cruz, somewhere along West Cliff Drive, leaning against a rock, watching the ever-moving sea. I need it like the body needs nourishment---air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, time to be alone.
But alone time is hard to come by and won't be my portion today. I'll just brood, I guess, surrounded by people, with the danger of infecting everyone. Hopefully just a little brood will shed and not all the buckets I feel.
posted by jay are at 3:40 PM
8 Comments:
i love fall too. it may be that i'm naturally a brooder too. the ocean with crashing waves against the rocks and the wind blowing hard enough to make your face cold, is one of my favorite places to be.
maybe by getting away, if in mind only, can help a little with the funkiness of this day.
5:47 PM, November 13, 2005
that's how i am in the fall also... i love/hate the fall for the perfect sadness and loss it embodies...
6:46 PM, November 13, 2005
did you guys know that in some cases (ie, most of them), a few things are true:
a) if you're with a man, he probably thinks it's his job to make you happy. (there are good reasons for this, but they are beyond the scope of this blog comment.)
b) when you're not happy (eg, if you're brooding), he feels he has failed. he worries that you are angry with him for some reason. he feels frustrated and stressed out.
c) it is not your duty to be Smiling Suzy 24/7
d) but if you were able to take 20 seconds at the beginning of the day to say to him "I feel really broody (or cranky, or sad, or anxious, or whatever) today. It's not your fault -- you're great, and I still love you. I don't need you to cheer me up; I just need a little space to brood, okay Sweetums?", you would be amazed -- AMAZED -- at how much that did for your relationship. It would be huge. Gigantic. Unbelieveable. Yfudlmqb. Trust me.
12:05 AM, November 14, 2005
yeah, i learned that the Hard Way. however, i'm also pretty up front about the funks i get into, and i get exhausted reminding him all the time that it's an inner funk. however, the time and effort it takes to bring that to the forefront is usually worth it to maintain a relationship.
mfcatugs.
5:40 AM, November 14, 2005
Couldn't agree more with bryan. It brought to mind something I posted awhile back (see below):
Monday, February 14, 2005
Husbands and Wives
One of my favorite novelists was Peter DeVries who poked fun at modern suburban living and modernity in general. Often, I'd run across a snipit that I thought worth recording. Here's one of them from his novel, "Reuben, Reuben. "
The conclusion Mopworth now drew about it was based on a sizable span of daily experience, now for the first time recognized in terms of a general principle. it was that the woman determined the weather in the house. From her came permission to laugh, instruction to brood, the cue for fun or woe. As he stepped in the door Mopworth realized that the first things he did was, not greet Geneva, but read her face to determine how she should be greeted. He consulted her face like this many times a day, as one consults a barometer, to see what kind of day or evening it will be. He had done this now, he remarked to himslef for the first time, for well over a year. Was it true of all marriages, or only mariages like his, in which the man is the acquiescent; the type wanting only peace in the house? Was it more true now that it had once been? Or more true in American than elsewhere? That woman calls the ever-changing emotional tunes to which once dances--was that universal fact accepted abroad without fuss and only exaggerated in a country where emancipation was bearing its first disillusioning fuits, like early returns in a doubtful election?
6:47 AM, November 14, 2005
I love fall too. Three days of wind gusts strong enough to knock you to the ground. Ahhh, the windy city. I hope you find a few moments of alone time today. :)
Lois Lane
9:35 AM, November 14, 2005
bryan - i took your advice today.
thanks...
10:41 AM, November 14, 2005
like hf, I sometimes feel that much energy is spent reassuring others that my funk is NOT ABOUT THEM!! Other times I'm sure I don't make that clear enough. Good points all around, Bryan. I sense some strong feeling behind them :)
And unca, that was an excellent passage. Interestingly, in my house growing up it was my father who determined the weather. We became experts at watching his face, barometers of the home. He's mellowed a lot but I guess I've picked up the mantle for it's true that I mostly determine the weather. And I hate that!! I hate when one person makes everyone around them walk on ice. When one person seems to grant permission for laughter or silliness. Oughtn't be that way. I determine to be less the maker of weather.
But it IS Fall and I DO fall prey to brooding and so I'll just make sure, as was pointed out, to establish the non-personal nature of the storm.
1:12 PM, November 14, 2005
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