October is an exercise in impermanence. Everyday takes on a different skin in the southeast corner of the United States. Here I remain for the entirety of the month, watching the trees blush into a deep shade of red as I circle through past memories with an upgraded, delighted, slightly tormented mind. 

Every morning I wake up to the sound of acorns falling on the roof. Summer thunderstorms have been replaced by leaves the color of rust raining through the sky. What does the Fall air from your childhood smell like? October in North Carolina at dusk smells like a fire burning in the distance, sounds like walking on the edge of silence with the occasional interruption of a car passing by, tastes like the color orange.

October in North Carolina feels like the past coming to wrap me in soft, hazy memories. I am here changing everyday with the trees. I keep seeing deer in the forest - two or three of them at a time. They don’t run, they just stop and stare. On November 1, I walk through the same forest and it is almost unrecognizable. The ground is covered in leaves and the path is cut open in the absence of lushness. I wonder how I have become unrecognizable since the spring turned. 

These were the main themes of my October:

Staying instead of Running: If I could, I would never stop moving. Running from one place to the next until I get the satisfaction I keep looking for. Can’t sit still, can’t stay long enough to see what happens after the uncomfortable moment passes. This time I stay and lean into appreciation for my surroundings. 

Harvesting Love: The benefit of staying is getting to see what grows. Tears and rage have settled into understanding and love. Generations of sacrifice and silenced sorrow are being brought down with the leaves, collecting on the surface of the Earth like a big pile of ash. The karmic cycles that spin through time and dissolve are only possible through Love. 

Death Season: Underwater, withdrawn, waiting in the comfort of darkness. Living with the four seasons means leaning into death and rebirth. Death means letting go and the grief that comes with the dissolution of one thing to the next. Am I searching for something that does not exist? In the darkness I long for the teachers that have yet to show themselves to me. For the knowledge that exists on an Earth long gone or long on its way. For the harmony of a forgotten time. 

Does chaos live in opposition to harmony? Chaos and impermanence are close friends. Chaos wants to be comforted by the paternal hand that offers divine presence. In this moment, we are safe. When I zoom out of the granular anxieties of me vs you, I see the bigger picture of us - where everything is changing and I cannot possess anything, yet there is an understanding of belonging. Because I know you will never leave me, even when time pulls us into death. 

Emulating Earth is not easy when so much of our existence is shaped by an artificial process. Even so, I try to surrender myself to the more natural processes that ask me to find peace in impermanence. Nothing can be controlled or predicted here, yet everything is moving, just how I like it.