Welcome August. It is the month were I feel the subtle lean into a new season. The light
is changing. The air has the faintest smell of fall in the early morning. The sun is noticeably setting just a bit earlier. It all signalling the wind up to the wind down of summer.
It is an antsy time of year for me. A liminal space where summer
seems endless yet Fall is shimmering its way in, hesitant to claim too much space. I'm trying to stay present in the flux rather than push time to hurry on and give me the crisp mornings and fall colors I love.
Here is some of tiny magic I am
finding to help me savor this not yet pumpkin spice time of year. How about you? I hope you also are finding the magic you need to savor the moments August brings.
1.
Taking my own advice:
2.
A big piece of work that was to happen this month is not. Disappointing in one way but I admit my nervous system is eased by space opening up.
More time to:
Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.
— Denise Levertov
3.
There are three places that mark new beginnings in the year. The New Year itself, my birthday, and the start of the school year (which my heart it will always be early September like when I was a kid). August holds the end of summer preparing for a
new start.
No longer is it shopping for back to school clothes, but planing a few cozy hand knits and gathering the yarn and needles. No longer is it shopping for school supplies but new office supplies instead-
which is really just the grown up way to say school supplies.
August holds a kind of gentle sadness and quiet yearning wrapped in still longer days and shiny new things for future times.
4.
The first week of August hangs at the very top of
summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone.
— Natalie Babbitt
5.
A blessing for your week:
(Wild Kuan Yin Oracle by Alana Fairchild, art by Wang Yiguang)