the ways the weather rearranges me
a slow surrender to autumn
hello.
there are people who live above the weather, sealed in a climate of their own making, as if the world outside their window were a painting that never changes. it could be january, with wind cutting through the streets like splintered glass, or august, with air so swollen and heavy it drapes itself over the skin until every step feels slower. and yet they still move untouched, their pace steady, their expression unmoved. they live inside a single, self contained season, unbothered by the sky’s mood, as though the turning of the earth were only a rumor.
and then there are the rest of us. we live inside it. porous to the air, altered by the smallest shift in light, rearranged by the scent of rain before it falls. the season turns, and without asking permission, we turn with it. not background, but a conversation we’re always in, a slow exchange between body and world.
the philosophy of seasons is simple begins with the understanding that life is not linear, no matter how we try to measure it. it swells and recedes, hardens and softens, blooms and withers. each season carries its own tempo, its own moral, its own instruction about how to be alive. winter pares life down to what is essential. spring insists on trust in the unseen. summer gives you abundance but quietly asks how you’ll bear its weight. autumn reminds you that beauty and loss are not opposites, but twins.
to live seasonally is to submit to this rhythm without trying to hold it still. it’s to let your inner life lean into what the outer life is doing. you don’t fight the shortening of days; you let your pace shorten too. you don’t resist the lengthening of light; you let yourself stretch out in it. and you accept (in a way that never stops hurting) that the moment you begin to love a season most is the moment it has already started to leave.
the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. i’m sharing the rest of my thoughts on the philosophy of seasons and what it means to live in step with the turning of the year. i’m also sharing a list of books, films, and small rituals that feel like autumn as a soft, steady place to land. if you’ve been craving a slower, more grounded way to move through this time, i hope they offer you what they’ve offered me.
thank you for being here, for supporting my work, and for believing in the worth of slow, deliberate thinking in a world that demands we keep moving faster.
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