An Elegy for Summer’s Ghost

On endings and transitions.

As the gentle divorce of the seasons subsides into well-worn routine, September anneals, and autumn begins to feel inevitable. As summer softly recedes and autumn creeps inward from the periphery, I find that my estival souvenirs fall under one of two categories: what is lost, and what lingers.

The lost light can either gnaw at or rebirth you. I have known both. I am an August child and deeply Californian, and therein lies my predisposed hunger for the summer. Summer is in my marrow, lodged deep within the cavities of my bones. That said, I am drawn to the in-betweens—what’s left behind, what doesn’t fit neatly, and what drifts. The seasons are porous, and I’m most comfortable in the liminal, the disjointed, the “not quite.” There’s an oceanic quality to the transitional: tides, rhythms, longing.

Sixteen years of learning to let go of waning summers have made me learn to welcome their companion. This equinox, I feel as Persephone must at her comings and goings from the Underworld—at home in either half of the dichotomy, yet each atmosphere evoking different feelings.

My summer this year was one entangled in beauty, friendship, and uncertainty. It was both confusion and clarity, change and continuity, a crossroads and a cobblestone path. Its memory lives on in my archives, most viscerally in my spiral notebooks and DCIM files. This year, I am content with releasing it.

Fall awakens spirits in me that ache to roam loosely on a page. It is the hush of solitude, the mists of first rains, the unexpected muses in the San Francisco fog. It is the intimacy of nighttimes eager to arrive, and the silencing of noise that allows for private hauntings and personal rituals.

Autumn invites us to linger in the tension between what remains and what disappears. In brittle firewood, withering flora, and decomposing leaves, autumn frames fragility and celebrates decay. The mud caked in our boots and the heavier weight of literature are not burdens but ballast—an anchoring reminder that heft can enrich, not encumber.

As we sink our roots into the autumn harvest, I’d like to share some of my own equinox practices—perhaps together, we can construct our own folklore.

kitchen

• savory: pumpkin soup with roasted pumpkin seeds, broccoli & cheddar pot pie, french onion soup (w/ gruyere cheese, obviously), apple/brie/honey grilled cheese, classic grilled cheese & tomato soup, quiche.

• sweet: apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple streusel coffee cake, caramel apples, pumpkin bread, cheesecake of all kinds, snickerdoodles.

• beverage: apple cider, karak chai, pumpkin spice latte (yep, I’m a white girl at heart), apple tea, ginger beer.

literature

• the secret history by donna tartt

• the invisible life of addie larue by v.e. schwab

• inferno by dante alighieri

• before the coffee gets cold by toshikazu kawaguchi

• wuthering heights by emily brontë

• absolutely anything by edgar allan poe

• ace of spades by faridah àbíké-íyímídé

• babel by r.f. kuang

film & television

• the craft

• dead poets society

• only murders in the building

• gilmore girls

• gossip girl

• the scream franchise

• the addams family / wednesday

music

• wednesday morning, 3am and bookends by simon and garfunkel

• masterpiece by big thief

• when the pawn… by fiona apple

• foxlore by the crane wives

• stick season by noah kahan

• miss anthropocene by grimes

• punisher by phoebe bridgers

• tapestry by carole king

• give me a minute and five seconds flat by lizzy mcalpine

• so tonight that i might see by mazzy star

• bella donna by stevie nicks

• kind of blue by miles davis

rituals

• pop a simmer pot on the stove and make tea with it afterward

• go to your local pumpkin patch or haunted house, if there’s one nearby

• have a spooky movie night with friends

• gather herbs from your local gardens, farmers’ markets, or your backyard

• press flowers

• read tarot with friends

• rewatch your favorite childhood fall media (mine are coraline and scooby-doo)

• bake a pie

• curate this year’s autumn playlists & pinterest board

• buy produce from the farmers’ market

• hunt down knit sweaters at your local thrift shops

• light autumn candles (my favorites are called “afternoon apple picking”, “fresh coffee”, “harvest apple”, and “fresh gingerbread”)

That’s all for today! Happy (slightly belated) equinox. I hope this season rearranges you <3