23 Comments
Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

Amal, you got me completely hooked on Hadestown at VP last October, so that's a new association for me, too! And I'm reading Piranesi right now and WOW -- it's so good! Hope you and yours are well and safe!

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

Ohhh, this is such a beautiful post. You already mentioned Night in the Woods, so I will add to the list Oxenfree. I am really looking forward to replaying The Longest Night on Longest Night.

I am amused by the tiny little colourful leaf, Vancouver leaves are bigger than my head xD xD xD

What is autumn-al about JS+MrN? :)

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

Maple syrup is what I associate with autumn, although that is not the season when it's made, but rather the season when I was most likely to appreciate the beauty of New England maple trees and therefore to remember to buy good syrup. I have moved to Colombia, where maple syrup is not to be found, and this absence is sad for me.

It has never occurred to me to associate music with autumn! I have personal "summer songs" but not songs for any other season.

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YOU CUTIE PIE WITH A LEAF ON YOUR NOSE.

Candles. Dress up. Was just listening to Hadestown this afternoon as I put on a red silk ball gown. Tea. Cuddling up with books. Occasionally wanted to dress in layers, but I almost immediately take them off again. :)

Anyway, I love you.

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

I'm sitting writing this as we're getting a decent snowstorm, so one thing that brings me to the season is that unseasonable October snow, where suddenly you have to dig for the jacket and the gloves and the hat and the snowblower and everything is a mess but I still love how beautiful it all is. But of course that is not the essence of Fall for me -- crisp, bright Fall with just enough warmth left to go on a nice walk and just enough cool to retreat to the living room with a cup of hot liquid and fiction. People going outside, even though it's colder, for some reason, like a last hurrah before the Long Dark (a game I associate with winter, definitely). Holidays, which have been multiplying as I get outside of the traditional White American holiday canon. Squash soup. I think that's about it.

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

Hot chocolate! It's still too hot to have it often (the perk of living in the south of Italy), but it's probably the thing that, for me, makes fall a happier time :')

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

It's the season (well, until this weekend when the time changes) when both my morning and evening commute have stunningly beautiful skies.

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

i LOVE Loreena McKennit's McThe Visit, and it is a big part of fall for me too (as is The Book of Secrets even if it's less explicitly seasonal). Watching the Lord of the Rings films is a big autumnal hallmark for me, and always makes me want to go romping through some leaves. Inevitably this leads to me rereading my favorite LOTR fanfics, so those also sink me deeper into fall. Butternut squash roasted with pasta. The Lion in Winter, even though it takes place at Christmas lol. The Summerween episode of Gravity Falls. And Over the Garden Wall!! I should watch taht tonight, it's been a couple years....

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

Just having finished Piranesi, I can absolutely trail the path that leads to autumn in its words. A truly lovely book.

Autumnal eddies in our locale are always the grey cast skies and crunchy crunch of skirling dry leaf litter that smells like mould and damp. Walking in this is forever a break in tension, with the light through a thinner, colorful canopy.

Our habits of the season:

Always have decorative gourds. Resteep hojicha or genmaicha all day. Hang the (ninth house) door skull from our 🦇 knocker. Watch Over the Garden Wall. Listen to Steve Schuch and the Night Heron Consort, Zoe Keating, Loreena McKennitt. A bowl of small size candy brands that Ferraro recently bought and improved, snacked on over the months of spooky season.

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

Foods! Forgot cooked foods. Butternut dishes, recently squash habanero mac and cheese, smoked salmon chowder, hot cocoa in the evening since coffee would keep us up. Pumpkin spice bread, and a new addition: kardemummabullar, the most delicious Scandinavian knots.

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

Ahh this is delightful; thank you Amal. I also love Night in the Lonesome October and bought a copy for Spouse in late September so he could share in the joy of it.

Last year I discovered a love for sweet potato and leek soup, which is delightfully sweet and savory and also really simple. It's been a great help to me while I'm avoiding nightshades. I also love mushrooms en papillote at this time! Something about the baked paper and the smell of mushrooms and herbs makes me think of the drying leaves. (I so miss leap-peeping.)

Another thing I love about this time is The Switching Of The Wardrobe. Because I don't go out at all right now, it hasn't happened for me yet; boo! However, I'm happily anticipating the folding and stowing of the sweet light airy summer clothes and the shaking out of the thick lush winter clothes.

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

I always miss autumn, because the trees don't change here (not all at once, at least) and October is dry and ashy. It's not at all the ideal of autumn that I wish for, so I try not to wish for it too much. But the nighttime temperatures are dropping and this morning I went outside for a run and felt cold, and that was autumn all at once. It's hot and dry now, as is usual for an October afternoon, but what I needed to feel like it was fall was a moment of crisp, cold, damp morning air.

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

For me it's reading ghost stories, as I always try to do in October, and watching spooky old movies (even though I do that year-round), and, cliche though it is, consuming pumpkin products from Trader Joe's like pumpkin butter and pumpkin spice coffee and pumpkin butternut soup.

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

Thanks for your lovely post Amal.

Here though, so we don't have those romanticized seasons. We just have Dry Season and Wet Season. (It's currently the latter so we're expecting a typhoon to arrive tomorrow and another one on Tuesday when the next one departs.) So the mood during these times are more melancholic. So it never occurred to me to prepare for the season. (I am more partial to Dry Season as I can take walks an bathe in the sun but a lot of people hate it as well due to the heat.)

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Oct 30, 2020Liked by Amal El-Mohtar

Your words certainly made me feel autumn! Thank you for this! Love Over the Garden Wall!!! And can't wait to read Piranesi. Music, always flamenco. A little solea por buleria, a pinch of cante jondo, and strangely those slow martinetes, the sharp tap tap of the cane, which evokes the blacksmith's hammer as the metal is shaped in the fire (as autumn always feels full to the brim with work), and perhaps the songs sang in the warmth of the tavern after all the hard work was done in the forge, but with the sorrow of winter peeking through the door. Nightmare Before Christmas has to be the film of choice for me! And of course, perfume... The woodsy, smoky, leathery Comme des Garcons' Incense Zagorsk, and the smoky vetiver of Le Labo's Vetiver 46. And always food, more food: baked honey squash served with walnuts and fresh clotted cream (this is a dessert!) and finally slow-cooked, melt-in-your-mouth, swimming-in-delicious-olive-oil cranberry beans!

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I have a big, orange, pullover waterproof jacket: when I get that out, I feel properly autumnal. Also wearing slipper-socks around the house.

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Autumn road trips of course - seeing the different fullness of foliage from place to place - but in terms of media, I’d have my Swiftie card taken away if I didn’t mention the Taylor Swift album Red, and the song All Too Well in particular. “Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place...”

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I always have such trouble adapting to fall, though as usual you've named a few works I already adore and twice as many I have yet to love. Thank you in advance.

Mainly I'm dropping in here to note that Gmail sorted your weekly letter into the hitherto unknown email category of Electronics. Congratulations, you are now an Electronics! You may not have known this! Let there be celebration!

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What brings me spooky autumn joy: the Addams Family (the 1960s TV show and/or the 90s movies), Shirley Jackson, and the Nightmare Before Christmas. I watched Paranorman last night after the festivities were over.

I also walked around my neighborhood to look at all the decor. It was absolutely magical.

And as a pagan, I always try to do something for the ancestors so I baked them some beer bread! :D

P.S. I love Hadestown oh my goodness.

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Amal, just reading this has helped created that Autumn enchantment. Since seasons don’t really change here we definitely have to make extra efforts, lighting candles, baked oatmeal, cider and coco. Over the Garden Wall is one of my fall favorites too! Pans Labyrinth and the Lord of the Rings feel very Autumnal to me. We also play more board games and seasonal crafts. I haven’t heard Hades Town, I’m excited to look it up!

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