Happy autumnal equinox. I wanted to have this letter sent to you earlier, but I’m taking today nice and slow. I’ve been drinking a quart of linden a day for herbalism school, and I think it’s unclouding corners of my mind that I believed had become inaccessible to me. As I write this to you I’m drinking a linden, marshmallow root, hibiscus, and elderberry green tea cold infusion I made for a picnic with friends. A couple of weeks ago, while playing my part in the steady crawl of heavy Los Angeles traffic, I listened to Closer on an inexhaustible loop and, making it to the end of my commute, walking up to the door of my friend’s house after having stepped through the threshold of my home hours before, I understood that it has become a sort of anthem for looking into the eyes of my shadow self. The last several months, but especially the past few weeks, have seen me calling out my name, turning an ear to the echo of my own voice, and atomizing. Veils are softening, pathways are intersecting, and I feel awake with the stars.
I’ve not been spending much time online lately, so I haven’t read a lot, but I did inadvertently go on something of a Sally Rooney news spree yesterday… I read Conversations with Friends the year it was released and have subsequently bought each of Rooney’s following novels; they reanimate the thrill of reading as an adolescent — submerging myself in the world of a book and only coming up for air after its last page. This isn’t to suggest that this doesn’t happen, still, with other books, with other writers, because it does, but there’s something distinctly entertaining about reading Rooney’s writing for me, and I consider that not a diminishment of her skills but an accentuation of them. I have no horse in the race of trying to dis/prove her credibility as the “first great millennial author” — I like being invited to follow along the path of someone’s prowess, and I appreciate how that person speaks to God and love and the worlds her characters inhabit, and for me that’s enough, and it seems to be for Rooney too: “I don’t tend to wonder about the relationship between the writer’s life and the writer’s work."
𓆨 Are You Cool Enough for the Latest Sally Rooney Novel?
𓆨 The incel and the dreamboat: Sally Rooney’s novel of two ‘difficult’ brothers in crisis
Here's a look at a few books that have recently kept me company…
𓇼 Shifting the Silence, Etel Adnan. Reading this felt like I was both water running through a stream and pebbles below the surface, churning.
𓇼 In Gratitude, Jenny Diski. Read this if you’ve ever shied away from a hug despite the shroud of loneliness that surrounded you.
𓇼 Love in the Void: Where God Finds Us, Simone Weil. Weil is for those days where I remember that hope and prayer are kind of the same thing.
𓇼 Annie Bot, Sierra Greer. This was, for me, less about AI and more about what it is like to move through the world as a woman. It’s readable and provocative, and halting and unvarnished and a little farcical, but not because of the robots (or maybe in response to them?). I enjoyed suspending my disbelief for this one, even if I didn’t love it. I feel like this would be a good Hulu series that’s billed as limited but is given a second season before being quietly cancelled.
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I’m not one for rating books so I use it more as a catalogue than a review system, but a couple people have asked and I do have a Goodreads for anyone who would like to add me.
If you’re up for some idle grazing, here’s a taste of what I’ve been into lately…
𓅰 I (finally) used Kanopy for the first time and it was to watch Julia Haslett’s 2010 documentary An Encounter with Simone Weil, and I need to talk with someone about Haslett hiring an actor to embody the spirit of Simone as a conduit to grapple with the complexities of her own moral and emotional character. I mostly liked what was happening here, but was admittedly mystified by Haslett’s surprise with and ensuing disinterest in Weil’s christianity; I assume the landscape of the time can speak to this — maybe less accessibility to Weil’s beliefs and scholarship, though this argument collapses under the reality of Haslett traveling to meet historians, students, and family members of Weil’s — but I also feel pretty strongly that God or the light or whatever you want to call it is remarkably evident in all of Weil’s writing.
𓅬 Thank you to my friend for sharing this with me and helping to guide me further into the understanding that “life is just a game and not a challenge.”
𓅭 Christian Blackwood’s 1989 documentary Motel was brought to my attention by this tweet, and I’m not only glad for having watched it, but also for a lot of the comments on the YouTube upload that seems to currently be the only place to currently watch this magical piece of media.
𓅮 This video really speaks to the deer medicine that lives in my orbit.
𓅯 Nighttime’s Lone Star washes over me in a way similar to the music of forests — beetles scuttling across fallen leaves, branches breaking off trees and disturbing the silence, the soft pad of paws on dirt, wind whistling around mountains, the rustling of squirrels, the bay of a coyote, the slow gurgle of water in the distance gathers its collective energy and becomes Eva Louise Goodman’s dreamy vocals and hypnotic melodies and ataractic refrains.
Sour Reflections: Sunset Hour
I’ve been thinking a lot about how “there are short lives but there are no small souls” since a guest expert recently shared this sentiment during one of my classes for my herbalism apprenticeship. Before this, she was talking about how Earth often puts us in a warm bath as a mother does a child — meaning the seasons roll in and ask us to slow down, bathing us with their clarity. Frantic moments create room for resilience. We relax into being. Often we welcome these transitions with open arms; we stretch into summer and sink into winter, try to quicken autumn’s pace, and beckon spring’s awakening. When we listen to Mother Nature, we hear ourselves more clearly, asking ourselves what the salmon and chickweed and mountains want when they swim upstream, break through the crack in the sidewalk, and blanket themselves in snow. The answer lies in how you open yourself up to what the living Earth is telling you, asking of you.
The autumnal equinox is a sort of soft exhale for me, an invitation to sweep the energetic floors, draw the curtains, loosen my harried limbs. It’s a time to savor the quiet moments, embrace the slower rhythms, and remember that the lengthening nightfall gives way to more shooting stars. It’s the season of Sunset Hour — trees have dropped their acorns, the sun closes her eyes a little tighter, and a field mouse has died, but a family of beetles is now fed. “Your lifetime comes from and returns to a wild, fecund root system.”
As nature prepares for a period of stillness and retreats into itself a little more with each passing day, we too can find comfort in the quieter moments. I’ve been thinking for quite a while now that for the next several weeks, we can explore ways to rest and nourish our mind, body, and spirit connections as we step into this season of the setting sun together.
You’ll notice a few shifts here and there with Barn Sour as we move into this regenerative time of year, but the heart of this space remains unchanged. Each week, I’ll be sharing small ways to unwind and restore, and you can choose whether or not to join me in carving out these moments of nourishment. I figure I’ll be doing them anyway, so why not use that as an invitation for making this a sort of communal affair?
This week I’ll be creating a space for relaxation, and I invite you to do the same. This can be a spot made with a pile of cushions on the floor for you to meditate or a corner of the couch you most enjoy reading from at night or a chair pulled closer to the soft afternoon light or sitting in your car for a few minutes before heading into work; it can be walking without music, even if it’s just around the block, or it can be listening to music while you shop for groceries. Let it be somewhere you can retreat, even for a few moments, to rest and exhale. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or perfect, just somewhere you feel at ease. The idea is comfort over perfection. Maybe you’ll want to light a candle or spritz along your collarbone a scent that soothes you, or put on a playlist that brings you comfort, or sip from a cup of tea; whatever signals to your body that this is a moment to slow down and carry you into flexibility. This space is yours to adapt and allow fluidity to live alongside you, even if just for a few minutes each day.
How can you invite more rest into your daily routine, and what does this look like for you as the season changes? I’ll be turning my home over so I can spend more concentrated time with it — packing up summer clothes and pulling out sweaters so my closet isn’t so overwhelming, cleaning inside my oven that I will be using more often, reorganizing my spice cabinet, doing a quick nightly wash of my floors that we will be walking across more often in wool socks. These shifts will divest my energy from the cluttering of my mind and allow me to burrow into the little den that my home becomes during this time of year. You create the space for relaxation, and it envelops you, and this week is about carving out a haven where you can breathe deeply and unwind. However small or simple, it’s a space that exists solely for your peace and your pace.
Here are a few small tokens I’ll be carrying into fall with me…
𓆝 Nightly hip-opening stretches before bed
𓆟 Lots of linden infusions
𓆞 The maca walnut brownie recipe I created this month
𓆝 The shared daily gratitude Notes app list I started with my friends
𓆟 Growing closer to and developing more and more trust with people I already love
Thank you for joining me for Barn Sour’s Sunset Hour as we venture into living a little more in harmony with the seasons together. I hope you find a space to call your own this week.
Barn sour how I missed you! Can’t wait to sink my teeth into the Rooney pieces you shared and I can’t wait to join you for sunset hour too. happy beginning of autumn <3