The greatest time of year.

An ode to fall and the creativity that I wish for you, words from Bittersweet…

Fall is harvest, when we’re getting all the good stuff that someone took the time to plant many months ago. Someone planted it, and now we benefit from it.  And that’s how it is when we make art.  We struggle and push and pant seeds deeps underground, and it doesn’t look like much for a while.  But them someone comes along and listens to your song or sees your painting and reads your poem, and they feel alive again, like the world is fresh and bursting, just like harvest.

Plant something today that will feed someone many months or many years from now.  Plant something today, because you’ve feasted on someone else’s carefully planted seeds, seeds that bloomed into nourishment and kept you alive and wide eyed.

Use what you have, use what the world gives you.  Use this first day of fall: bright flame before winter’s deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Out tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smell of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself.  The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world’s oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white and the silence of winter. 

Fall is begging for us to dance and sing and write with just the same drama and blaze.

-Shauna Niequist