an off-topic exploration of October, retrospection and literature

Many of us experience subtle shifts in mood with the changing seasons. For some, these mood changes can be attributed to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is a type of depression characterized by a recurrent seasonal pattern and is believed to be caused by a disruption in serotonin and melatonin levels.  I hate to generalize because SAD involves a complex constellation of markers, but symptoms typically emerge in fall and early winter and improve or resolve in spring and summer.  While it’s estimated that 5% of the U.S. population may suffer from this disorder, others may experience less pronounced or minimally disruptive seasonal changes in mood. For me, the autumnal shift emerges in mid to late August. It could be signaled by the back-to-school hustle that starts to ensue with the trickle of emails from my children’s schools, the frantic push to get the summer reading done, and the slog in getting my oldest organized and packed for his return to the college campus.  This heightened awareness might also be related to the fact that I’ve become a casual gardener in my middle age ( a label I’m not sure I need or want)—middle-aged, not casual gardener—and is perhaps an observation I’ve taken from the plants I spent the season pruning, watering and protecting. Certainly, this all could come into play, but it never fully explained the transmutative sensation I can almost feel in my blood.

While August and September tend to feel like a long, slow deflation, October’s arrival brings a sense of renewal and rejuvenation and it’s not about the pumpkin spice or sweater weather. I’m not diametrically opposed to either, but I’d prefer to keep the gourds seasonally appropriate. I think, for those of us who have lived most of our lives in the Northeast, we’ve come to know October as the great drama artist of the season with its pageantry of color. By the time the month flounces in with its cape of gold and bronze, I’ve already made my peace with summer’s end and bid farewell to the three months’ worth of sand that has taken over my backseat—a welcomed sight in June; a source of frustration by August.

October ushers a sort of mystery and magic with its tumult and splendor. A Gen Z-er might refer to as “giving all the feels” or something to that effect, but I’d rather go deeper into what those “feels” truly arouse. If I step outside, and I’m not assailed by the whirling motor of a neighbor’s leaf blower (something that’s become a bit of a hot-button topic in my county) I can hear the satisfying crunch and crackle of leaves under foot, punctuated by the accompanying medley of acorns tumbling to the ground, where they will likely be found by the abundance of local wildlife.  

As a month that delivers so much to the senses, October tends to awaken a range of memories. Perhaps I’m waxing a little too nostalgic, but when I hear the acorns dive into the leaf beds in my yard, I’m reminded of the first apartment my husband and I shared from 2001 – 2003 on the aptly named First Street in Hoboken, NJ. We only had a few windows on the rear side of our building, and while the view offered very little, being on the second floor, we did have a small courtyard below us that belonged to a specialty foods shop, and in that courtyard was a single, small or “dwarf” apple tree. I could only see the crown of the tree from our windows, and I don’t know what variety of apples it produced, but I imagine it had been planted generations ago and perhaps had companions before the area became urbanized. But the little tree, despite being surrounded by multiple five-story walkups, managed to get enough sun and what it needed to produce its fruit. On cool nights, with the bedroom windows open, I could almost hear the ripened bundles of kinetic energy loosening from the antique tree’s branches, then parachuting through a clap of leaves, followed by the soft percussive thud upon meeting the earth. Why I remember this more than twenty years later, I couldn’t tell you.  Maybe it’s a longing for a sense of simplicity that modernity seems to have little use for.  At the time, it may have served as a sort of auditory tonic to a soul that was feeling more than a little malnourished by a lack of green space, as I was only about two years into the acclimation process to city living.  Still, the apple tree memory does not connote any feelings of melancholy. On the contrary, it is spun in the fiery threads of an enchantment with October that seemingly defies the boundaries of language. Of course, many a writer has fallen under its bewitching spell.  

Of the writers who have explored the autumnal vibrations of October, it is Jack Kerouac who many of us think of first. Kerouac had a connection to the transitional month, and it appeared in his prose and poetry. In his seminal, autobiographical novel On the Road, Kerouac writes of his protagonist Sal Paradise who is traveling by bus on a long journey home in October: “In inky night we crossed New Mexico; at gray dawn it was Dalhart, Texas; in the bleak Sunday afternoon we rode through one Oklahoma flat-town after anther; at nightfall it was Kansas. The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.”  Kerouac passed away on October 21^st, 1969, and it’s worth mentioning that each October Kerouac’s hometown and final resting place, Lowell, MA, hosts a festival in his honor, the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Fall Festival. Though I didn’t have the opportunity to attend the festival earlier this month, I hope I’ll be able to keep the weekend clear for the 2025 events.

As we are quickly approaching the end of October, I hope, like me, you will savor the proprietary sensations that October offers: whether it be on a hike, a walk, winterizing your garden, or sitting outside to simply listen and feel the air. If you go out at night, you might even be lucky enough to hear the nocturnal flight calls from above of migrating birds following their ancient migratory routes known as the Flyway. Jim Harrison, poet, novelist, essayist, and outdoorsman, who died in 2016 while writing a poem in longhand at his desk, wrote of this natural phenomenon in his poem “Midnight Blues Planet:” “Every so often we hear the current of night music / from the gods who swim and fly as we once did.”  Like the changing of seasons, it’s a reminder that we are all part of this wondrous cycle.

Keep scrolling to see a few October and autumnal-themed poems and songs I curated to keep you or get you into the mood. I also included the poem from Raymond Carver because it explores ideas of reflection and self-awareness, which are inherently connected to the transitional nature of autumn.

Locking Yourself Out,
Then Trying to Get Back In

—Raymond Carver

You simply go out and shut the door
without thinking. And when you look back
at what you’ve done
it’s too late. If this sounds
like the story of a life, okay.

It was raining. The neighbors who had
a key were away. I tried and tried
the lower windows. Stared
inside at the sofa, plants, the table
and chairs, the stereo set-up.
My coffee cup and ashtray waited for me
on the glass-topped table, and my heart
went out to them. I said, Hello, friends,
or something like that. After all,
this wasn’t so bad.
Worse things had happened. This
was even a little funny. I found the ladder.
Took that and leaned it against the house.
Then climbed in the rain to the deck,
swung myself over the railing
and tried the door. Which was locked,
of course. But I looked in just the same
at my desk, some papers, and my chair.
This was the window on the other side
of the desk where I’d raise my eyes
and stare out when I sat at that desk.
This is not like downstairs, I thought.
This is something else.

And it was something to look in like that, unseen,
from the deck. To be there, inside, and not be there.
I don’t even think I can talk about it.
I brought my face close to the glass
and imagined myself inside,
sitting at the desk. Looking up
from my work now and again.
Thinking about some other place
and some other time.
The people I had loved then.

I stood there for a minute in the rain.
Considering myself to be the luckiest of men.
Even though a wave of grief passed through me.
Even though I felt violently ashamed
of the injury I’d done back then.
I bashed that beautiful window.
And stepped back in.

Midnight Blues Planet

—Jim Harrison

We’re marine organisms at the bottom of the ocean

of air.  Everywhere esteemed nullities rule our days.

How ineluctably we travel from our preembryonic

state to so much dead meat on the ocean’s hard floor.

There is this song of ice in our hearts. Here we struggle

mightily to keep our breathing holes opened

from the lid of suffocation.  We have misunderstood the stars.

Clocks make our lives a slow-motion frenzy.  We can’t get

off the screen back into the world where we could live.

Every so often we hear the current of night music

from the gods who swim and fly as we once did.