This post is a stream of consciousness. TLDR: If you’re looking for unsolicited advice, tie up loose ends and prepare for something new and exciting in these final days of summer. The balance of a new season is coming soon, but the imbalance of the present moment is necessary to observe and understand. The post to follow might be entertaining or boring, so take it or leave it. I haven’t made clear points about anything particular, really. Maybe there is no point at all… just a tune to hum along to. ♫
September is the best month of the year. The air gets crisp, the pumpkins emerge, and fresh narratives commence with haste. Things start changing as the days get shorter and the bugs die off. People like myself (mercurial grad students excitedly breaking in new pens and planners) thrive during these days of reimagined schedules and syllabus review. My autumnal mantra is usually something like “things will be different this year,” and usually they are.
A year ago I was a terrified new therapist in my first ever session with my first ever client. I am proud to say I’ve now completed 700 hours of an (unpaid) clinical internship, and now I am preparing to write my thesis with the plan to graduate with my Masters in Counseling Psychology in Spring 2023. A year from now I hope to have found a job that pays well and offers a sense of purpose and confidence in myself and the work I’m doing. Hopefully the people are pleasant and my clients are challenging but enjoyable, at least sometimes. What even is life without a worthy vision of some better future ahead? How can ephemeral desires for purposeful action even manifest consistently in an uncertain world? I don’t know, but I’ve been contemplating the aim of my actions a lot recently. I’m always aiming somewhere. I’m never sure if it’s the right target, but at least I’m not standing still.
Well, I think my current belief is that meaning manifests largely in the subjective feelings of resonance we experience viscerally and soulfully as humans. It’s a felt sense of quality, a deepening of value, an interaction with the knowledge of why we’re even here at all. That is what my thesis is about: resonance, value and quality, or resonance as a barometer for how artfully one’s life is being lived. I can’t wait to start writing it. Any day now…
We all resonate at different frequencies. I resonate quite deeply with the vibrational pulls of outer space, dreams, nature and music. The stars remind me of the uncanny mystery of humanity’s plight on this tiny speck in space. Dreams show me what I’m missing. Nature is the only way I stay sane in this weird society of phones and screens and bras and hairbrushes. Music helps me find balance in this ever-shifting reality. I still fumble quite often, but at least I’m usually singing along to a song while I find my footing. Right now September’s tune of choice is Lou Reed’s 1965 demo recording of “Pale Blue Eyes,” released this very week as a special September treat to humans everywhere. The harmonica and acoustic guitar paired with fuzzy alternate lyrics to an all-time-favorite-tune of mine is making me feel something pure and real. Life is most tolerable when lived poetically, with sacred melody sprinkled atop a worthy beat.
Parenting can be poetic at times because the cadence of childhood is palpable when you’re really in the beginner’s mind of earnest exploration. Serio Ludere: serious play. Kids are tuned in to the world around them — their defenses aren’t built up enough to block out the music of stones and dirt and worms and clouds. My two-and-a-half year old daughter’s middle name is Lou — a tribute to Reed’s life work and the impact it has had on me. I hope her art is as inspired as his was. They’re both born in early March and they both have some deeper sorrow and splendor in their eyes than most people do. I hope she finds a way to be true to herself like Lou Reed did, and I hope my parenting helps cultivate her showing up authentically as he did.
Notable traits of Lou Reed: hauntingly poetic, gender non-conforming, ensouled, unapologetically himself, watery, queer, drug-loving, melancholic and mutable. I appreciate mutable humans because they’re unpredictable — things are always ending so they may begin again. I’m also biased because my mutability defines me, and I like it that way. It’s a mutable season right now as summer comes to an end, and that’s part of why September is my favorite month. Then around 9/22 the days shift into cardinality as autumn begins in a passing moment of equal representation of light and dark. Day and night take up the same temporal space for a brief and balanced moment — a tempo shift two-thirds of the way through September’s song.
Lou was authentic. He was a brilliant songwriter and an androgynous icon of the late 60s onward who never really stopped falling in love or making music. He was also quite proud of his Jewish heritage even though he wasn’t all that religious. What do his cultural Jewish-ness and romantic musical prowess have to do with the month of September? Well, traditions and rituals have been increasingly important to me since marrying into a Jewish family and studying depth psychology. And as I learn to value ancient nuggets of wisdom, I’m realizing that September’s frequency is specific and well-documented throughout history.
I grew up Catholic but never really loved religion — but still, I can see the value in the ritual and patterned behavior created over thousands of years within religious structures. Nothing is sacred anymore. Getting rid of the essence of belief and faith seems silly and sad to me, and this plastic world we’re living in begs to be more mindfully experienced. Plus, I can’t go on without belief in something more before, during or after this life, even if the afterlife is just a grey purgatory space where I can at least meet some of my dead idols and figure out the answers to questions I never solved while still alive. Then I’ll reincarnate as a boulder or a humble sheep somewhere in Ireland or Italy. Yeah, that sounds good.
Okay, this post clearly isn’t about Lou Reed. It is about learning to dance in the liminal space between unchanging dogmatic rigidity and directionless free-floating abysses of uncertainty. Maybe you resonate with heavy metal or opera music. I like stripped down folk rock. I seem to have a type: Ezra Furman is another Jewish musician challenging the gender binary who is mutable as can be. She makes music for broken-hearted people still plodding along toward a distant horizon. I’m seeing her twice this week and can’t wait to sing along to her new song “Dressed in Black” adorned in my usual all-black attire.
I watch live music to perceive and receive the chunk of reverberation someone discovered, composed and performed. The audience is extremely grateful for the offering of song. What a beautiful situation we’ve orchestrated for ourselves, the experience of a concert. I think musicians must be here so living feels less pointless —these simple rhythmic and melodic moments are some of the only echoing patterns of significance I can count on. People remember deeply when the right song or other expression of truth takes hold of them. This has been my experience in clinical, social, and personal contexts. It’s not always music shaking people up, but it is a pattern revealed amidst life’s disorder.
Anyway, among other things I am currently learning piano, how to be a therapist, how to be a mom, how to be a loving partner, how to own and maintain a home, how to discipline myself to write about something I care too deeply about, and how the Hebrew calendar is oriented by the rhythmic timing and patterning of the moon’s trajectory. Each month I read a chapter of this book my mother-in-law gifted me, which should probably be titled “Jewish astrological wisdom for the layperson: a guide to the meaning of all the holidays and months,” but the actual title is Kabbalah Month by Month by Melinda Ribner. It has been a trusty companion to have by my side throughout the past year. Every new moon I take it out and read. Here are some of my impressions from September’s passages.
The current and last month of the year, Elul, will conclude as the new moon emerges in the tiniest sliver of night sky about 8 days from now. Elul is about turning inward, cultivating awareness, tying up loose ends, and committing to change. Change is mutable, and so is Elul’s energy. The area of healing in this month is action. This vibe is classic Virgo season: an irresistible urge to analyze and criticize the events of this past year in the interest of active betterment. There is a pointed care-taking of self and others occurring now which can feel productive, but also harsh and spiky (anyone with a close Virgo nearby has encountered this loving, goal-oriented thorniness). This month is about revisiting things and then letting go once the lessons are learned and honored. Only then can forgiveness of self and others occur, and genuine forgiveness is the purpose of Elul.
As difficult and stubborn as we can be, letting go of our hurts and anger is often the best thing we can do for ourselves.
Then the changeable, tangible earth of Elul shifts into the refreshing cardinal air of newness. Soon we will find ourselves balancing on scales at the head of the year: the month of Tishrei. Whereas Elul was all about looking back at the past, Tishrei looks forward to set generative and fertile intentions for the next 12 months. In this month we set the tone for the year — a resonance signature which echoes onward and plots our trajectory forward. No pressure! But yeah, aiming for joy and vibrational chillness is probably wise if you can muster up enough gumption to find the silver linings on your inner map of meaning. Aesthetically pleasing maps are all the better: beauty is the Venusian way, after all. Maybe it’s vision board time — so what do you really want? What would that feel and look like? Admitting the answers is the first step toward fulfilling the secret wish.
I have lots of secret wishes. One of them is to be a musician, not just an academic who writes about music and resonance but a real bona fide musician with at least three albums and a special collection of unreleased music, which some people end up cherishing more than any of my crisper more polished studio records. That would be the dream life. For now I type it out, practice chordal progressions, and wait patiently for inspiration. I think it’s coming soon. I feel sincere when I play piano from the heart and it is rewarding when I feel myself improving.
Speaking of inspiring stimuli, this month heals us sexually because fornication is the start of everything thereafter. Let’s get it on, y’all. Libido is the way to go. As such, Tishrei begins with a bang (hehe) on Rosh Hashana — the Jewish new year and humanity’s birthday. For the first ten days of the month we are supposed to go deep within and get real with ourselves, as well as whatever higher selves we report to. Casting sins into bodies of water, the breeze over the shore whispers back assurance that we can let go of all we’re still holding on to. Yom Kippur then arrives as a moment of judgment and atonement — a day for meditative fasting and centering in the unity of the world at large. It’s heavy because all tension-of-the-opposite moments feel that way. It’s a crucial paradox. Then a release happens once stillness in the chaos is cultivated with intention.
“The future’s breathing down the neck of the past”
In the latter half of Tishrei, Jews build an outdoor three-walled open-ceiling shack in the yard for celebration and feasting… But I haven’t mentally gotten that far yet. I am just trying to get through these final days of September. I want to enjoy the feeling of mosquito-less walks in the woods while the sun still sticks around long enough after work to enjoy a long walk on the trails by my house. I want to feel my body and give it what it needs — no more artificial dyes or refined garbage. I want to send that wedding gift I still haven’t sent from back in July. I want to clean out the house, finish the to-do lists, and get ready to start a new chapter. May my mutable, shifting self find the strength to start and finish something beautiful. The world needs beauty, not utility. The earth needs us to listen. The drums are beating in our chests. Thump, thump, thump, thump.
My 28th year already feels lighter than the last few years; I’m emerging from a dark night of the soul. 28 is my lucky number, after all. In the past month I’ve had some degree of success staying content and accepting the limitations and restrictions of my present circumstances with grace. Now I need some style. I’m wearing dangly earrings this week, so that’s new. Gratitude has been a big part of finding the balance. And love… Love is really the magic cure for all the unsolved questions in my soul. I love my husband and my daughter, my parents, my brothers, my in-laws, my friends, my classmates, my professors, my coworkers, and the inner selves all fighting for the driver’s seat.
Every resonance signature of each of my conflicting personalities is slightly different. They’re all still trying to figure out how to sound like an acappella group instead of a gymnasium of unruly middle-schoolers. The right harmonies will come if we all keep showing up to practice. Resonant moments to keep my unfolding narrative rolling along — this is my intention for the new year.
May your soul weigh in on all you aim for this upcoming year. Be well, be quiet, be okay with the liminal space. Be silly above all. It’s not so dire and dreadful all the time. It’s September — the best month of the year. :)
All of the 35mm pictures are from a road trip I took in September of 2017.
