Just a taste of what’s popping up. In case you were looking for a prompt.

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1. Anyone else hate raking leaves? Find bagging them’s even worse? A reminder, too, of the tons of snow to be shoveled, all too soon around the corner. Will this be the year we cave in and buy a snow blower, rather than continue by hand?
2. Commuting to choir each week requires driving through Belmont. That is, the one in Massachusetts. When folks mention the name, it could as easily refer to the one here in New Hampshire, up in the Lakes Region. Or, in my past, the neighborhood where I grew up in Ohio, going all the way through Belmont Elementary and High.
3. Sometimes on that commute, the GPS sends us through some exclusive neighborhoods. We note the tonier neighborhoods are dominated by slate roofs.
4. As a midday meal, it’s hard to beat fresh mussels and a baguette.
5. So many things have to be taken at a leisurely pace, doled out over time.
6. Would love to hit weekend morning dim sum in Boston’s Chinatown again. The restaurant basement function rooms fill with 250 or more diners as a dozen carts of delicacies pass your table. Pick something, if you wish, or wait for the next. Nothing in English, and no prices in sight. Just what’s in that steamed bamboo dish? The total for this “Chinese fast-food tapas” turns out to be about what we’d pay for breakfast at McDonald’s.
7. Another unanticipated side of my Motets: the close connection between religion and politics, or at least social responsibility.
8. Did Quaker culture essentially fail to address the earthy side of life? Could we have become all too refined?
9. Guiding and teaching a new generation – a swami at last. Or whatever you want to call the guru or elder or abbot.
10. What are we really afraid of? Really afraid of?

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Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.

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1. Am imagining evenings for violin and piano. How long since I’ve even picked up rosin and bow!
2. A drive through a stretch I call the Black Forest can be quite amazing now. So luminescent, a golden-yellow tunnel of light.
3. Indian Summer officially comes after the first killing frost. It’s almost scary.
4. How much I feel myself a dilettante. A little of this, a little of that.
5. The Big Question? (Questions! Yes, it’s questions!)
6. It’s important to have a place to wind down, to fester, to percolate. To look at the messy side of your existence. (Nothing of that in a Frank Lloyd Wright home.)
7. Reza Baraheni is the Iranian poet I heard read after his release from prison and torture. He warned that the alternative to the Shah would be even worse.
8. My Mediterraneo poetry project had me reconsidering Greek and Roman mythology and then seeing that in contrast to theology. What strikes me is how convoluted it is, more than even Hindu cosmologies, and how anthropromorphic, down to the birthing or immortals slaying other immortals while frozen in time. How intricately it’s bound to a specific locale and its people. In contrast to the One Truth implicit in monotheism, i.e., science, the mythologies give us a cosmos that’s chaotic, ruled by caprice, fear, vengeance, conflicting deities as the source of human suffering. How do you find direction in such confusion?
9. A neighbor’s 2 1/2-foot iguana is on the loose, according to the poster on the telephone pole. There’s a $100 reward.
10. You don’t shoot your own troops. Not if you want to win. Otherwise, there’s every reason to mutiny.

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Being mindful of what’s right in front of us can always be a challenge. Here are 10 new items from my end.

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1. We’re well into the foliage watch. Weather plays into it, too. Heavy rain, followed by glorious clear. Or sunlight blazing against slate-gray clouds. As for the chores, in advance of winter? “I’ve been on my feet all day.”
2. Each October I revisit the symphonies of Charles Ives. It’s not just his birthday month but also an acknowledgement of his deep New England roots. The annual tradition often leads to the symphonies of George Whitefield Chadwick and then John Knowles Paine. Inevitably, I wind up with the one symphony and the piano concerto by Amy Beach. Big, magnificent, often richly Romantic pieces, for the most part. Wish they were much, much better known by the public. (For more.)
3. A stay-at-home morning: pad about, get some writing and reading in, finally shower and dress at 2 p.m. And then? Swim in the indoor pool.
4. Am wondering what might have happened if I’d achieved “success” – at any number of points. I would have wound up moving along that groove the rest of my life, likely without exploring many of the other facets I now find overlapping.
5. My third-floor lair and my loft in the barn are both tree houses!
6. My wife resisted when I insisted on the dishwasher. How much she objected! My, my, how that’s changed! These days she even argues it can be cheaper than hand-washing the plates and flatware in the sink.
7. We live close to the state university but partake of so little of its arts programming. Even now that we know where to park.
8. Bought a new calendar but back home saw it was for the wrong year – this one, rather than next. Still, the illustrations are marvelous.
9. To gain the reader’s trust is the central issue of each work. It’s how transformation through action across time connects.
10. Degrees of Truth? Now this really gets complicated.

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Being mindful of what’s right in front of us can always be a challenge. Here are 10 new items from my end.

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1. How quickly the sun goes down these days. How quickly, darkness descends.
2. Even if I could read a new novel a day, in a year I could not catch up with a single week of publication. So many good writers! How on earth could I possible keep abreast of them? Recognize names, even? It’s hopeless!
3. Every autumn I have to be on guard. Take my meds. Something in the air often takes me out, sometimes for a week or two, with something resembling “flu like symptoms” that remains a mystery to my doctors.
4. Moonlight at the lighthouse: silvery on shimmering surface surrounded by smoky blue.
5. Sometimes I look at the barn and think of Joseph Albers. All the paintings he made with only three colors, each one a square band within another.
6. What a wonderful fall tradition, these potted mums! Especially since we have so few flowers left that can be cut and brought indoors. Even the green leaves must feel they’ve overstayed. There’s something tired, browning, even before any blight.
7. Take care driving the back roads at night. Much wildlife’s out and about roving.
8. End of the season at York Animal Kingdom comes sharply. The pygmy goats in the pen by the highway are gone, as are the Ferris wheel cars by the beach.
9. The goldfinches have lost their yellow. How sudden and uniform their molting! Back to winter’s gray duster c0at.
10. In our autumn foliage, one day can turn everything. Or even overnight.

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Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.

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1. So fine to curl up together in the hammock, even if we do require a blanket by this time of year. Good times, indeed, if we pause to catch them.
2. Eighteen years later, I can still ask: Just who is she, really? Little is truly predictable. So much remains full of surprises.
3. The joy of grilling continues. Pork chops and ribs, chicken, sausage. And anything beef goes so gloriously with our remaining stream of fresh tomatoes.
4. The potted mums by the back door catch my breath each time I set forth. A few golden blossoms surrounded by a field about to burst out so starry!
5. I thought the household chaos and clutter would greatly improve when the kid moved to college. I was wrong.
6. Observing high school kids and realizing they’re so young! Compounded by recognition of how much unfolded when we weren’t much older! How did we ever survive?
7. A parallel universe I could have inhabited. I’ve been grieving, so much lost, even while so much is gained.
8. We’ve decided hard cider, rather than wine, can be a distinctive touch when we’re guests elsewhere or entertaining. New Hampshire has two producers we really like, and their work couldn’t be more different: North Country, in an old mill just a few miles away, and Farnum Hill on Poverty Lane on the other side of the state. As one friend described the latter, with great approval: “It’s apple champagne.”
9. Barring a hurricane somewhere down the coast, the ocean around here can be warmer now than it was in July. Some of the best swimming happens now. Along with some of the best memories.
10. Maybe there’s still time to harvest staghorn sumac cones and grind them into powder, like the popular Middle Eastern spice that goes so well on kabobs.

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