I started Tea with Colleen in February. I had a funny quote about Lent from my mom, and I wanted to publish the story around that time. The logo, two Victorian ladies with a picture of myself cropped on one of the heads, was put together right before I published when I realized I needed a header. I thought the name came to me the same day, but I recently found a journal entry from my 24-year-old self with a goal. Iâm not sure if Iâm sad that it took me 6 years or if Iâm content that I started at all. Maybe some of the goals, and dreams, we set for ourselves flow back into our lives naturally when weâre ready. Â
I donât need to go into length about Octoberâs magic because I imagine youâre experiencing it. Fallâs wonder, a symptom of the seasonsâ changing of the guard and a creeping melancholy like the sunsetâs orange beginning an hour or two earlier. I start to reflect on how there are only ~70 days left in the year, and whether my year was âenough.â If I did enough, if I'm doing enough. The only way I know how to combat that dismissive, shadowy part of me is to get outside for the last light jacket days.Â
New Yorkâs spontaneity seems to boom in the fall, with the city enjoying the crisp air, changing leaves, and everyone running into city dogs, decorations, and each other. I took a walk around Gramercy Park, peering through its private iron rod fences and scribbling something about falling for my partner, now fiance, around its historic streets that escape the cityâs whirl. During an evening walk, classical music echoed from a restaurant on a cobbled street corner. River Deliâs tiny outdoor seating lured me in for a bruschetta appetizer. I listened to sophomores in high school discuss the texture of burrata, remembering the conversations I had at 15 during Homecoming season while walking to my hometownâs grocery store for pumpkin chocolate chip bread. We definitely were not discussing the texture of burrata back then.
Fall to me is the embodiment of nostalgia. The year is dimming and with it pieces of memory, nurturing us in a way. Parts of the past bring you an unexpected richness to experiencing the present.Â
So maybe youâre excited or maybe the year or season is kicking your ass, and for me, this year's fall feels like a little of both. Itâs so damn pleasant and also a little moody. Itâs the season of harvesting. Either by choice or through force, we pick up pieces, remembering who we once were, and who we are becoming now. We reclaim parts and relinquish what we no longer need.Â
Isnât it enough to just experience lifeâs shifts, without controlling so much of its timing? Isnât it enough to take pics of Brooklynâs stoop Halloween decor?