I’m not yet ready to call this a podcast. It’s not highly polished with professional production touches, there’s no intro music or soothing autumnal soundtracks accompanying it. Instead, it’s nearly 14 minutes of me droning on in my soft dulcet tones. I hope you like it.
I’d encourage you to listen first before reading the notes below.
You can listen to Aimée Francis walking through the fields and rambling (her words, not mine!) here:
October audio postcard
Burnished fields, AI, books, autism and uncertainty
October 3, 2024
I also recommend this one - it’s just over 4 minutes, her story in brief about what Northern Ireland means to her. You can read along with this one too:
I'm Irish. But home has never been Ireland.
Notes on belonging
Mar 17, 2024
For my dear language learner readers, exposure to a range of different accents is invaluable practice for your listening skills (but you don’t need me to tell you this).
Not mentioned in the audio was this post from Kayse Melone at Melon Juice. Although Kayse doesn’t have the same positive feelings towards autumn as I do (you can read this post to find out why), she captures the magic of the season far better than I can, living far away from New England as well:
On the first day of October, the air is crisp and fresh, but still quite warm here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The sun still shines boldly, but yet there’s a softness creeping into her rays that brush through the leaves of the trees, warning them that soon, not too soon, but soon enough, they’ll burst into vibrant colors in a last ditch exclamation of life and living and, finally, fall to the ground and end their existence.
Henry James
It might be an ado about trifles—and half the poetry, roundabout, the poetry in solution in the air, was doubtless but the alertness of the touch of Autumn, the imprisoned painter, the Bohemian with a rusty jacket, who had already broken out with palette and brush; yet the way the color begins in those days to be dabbed, the way, here and there, for a start, a solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy-ball, with the whole family gathered round to admire her before she goes.
One speaks, at the same time of the orchards…the apple tree in New England plays the part of the olive in Italy, charges itself with the effect of detail, for the most part otherwise too scantly produced, and, engaged in this charming care, becomes infinitely decorative and delicate…
The apples are everywhere and every interval, every old clearing, an orchard. You pick them up from under your feet but to bite into them, for fellowship, and throw them away; but as you catch their young brightness in the blue air, where they suggest strings of strange-colored pearls tangled in the knotted boughs, as you notice their manner of swarming for a brief and wasted gayety, they seem to ask to be praised only by the cheerful shepherd and the oaten pipe.
“New England: An Autumn Impression", 1905
Autumn is my season, dear. It is, after all, the season of the soul.
Virginia Woolf
Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.
F Scott Fitzgerald
Recommended Reading
Here are some books I’m reading or have recently read. This is my third time with Ex-Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader; American Nations is easily one of the best books I’ve read explaining why there are so many regional differences (and political attitudes) among different areas of North America; I quoted from Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop at the start of my audio post, but for a dark and macabre October Halloween read, I highly recommend The Bloody Chamber. It’s perfect for late nights just before bedtime (though if you’re prone to nightmares, maybe it’s a bad idea - can people be prone to nightmares? You know what I mean.)
Recommended Listening
There’s much to choose from that fits in well with this time of year. I’m only sharing one, which I’m about ready to start listening to - I usually give it four or five listens every October in the run up to Halloween. Nothing else suits the mood quite so well. It’s 35 minutes of introspective scratchy bliss.
Jonny Greenwood “Horror Vacui”
I hope you’re Keene (sic) on pumpkins:
An Ode to Autumn: an audio chat