Early & Alone #71: In That Lavender Haze
On vertigo and liminal seasons
The world outside’s gone smeary with fog, the reds & golds of the leaves blotted out like lipstick on tissue. Mornings are dark and heavy with damp. It’s physically difficult to get up and get going. I love autumn but it’s hard not to think of it as a liminal time, just the preamble to winter, the darkest and bleakest time of year for me, for most people. I want to be able to appreciate the pumpkins and the leaves and the deep blue skies and the cardigans for what they are instead of as harbingers of doom. I’m getting better every year, I think. But I guess you could say that I just wanna stay in this lavender haze. (Yes, I have now listened to Midnights about 5 times.)
The past few days I’ve also been dealing with some vertigo, this feeling of spinning when I’m just sitting still. It’s disconcerting but I’d just chalked it up to another symptom of having a body, of being alive. It happens not infrequently, this weird disorientation, but it usually passes on its own, a kind of corporeal fog. But Jeff sent me a link to some exercises you can do as well as info on what is actually likely causing the vertigo and whoa, mind blown. I laid on my bed and let my head hang off the edge then turned it a certain way to diagnose which ear was to blame. Like a science experiment! DEFINITELY the right ear. So I did another series of movements where I laid down quickly and turned my head in certain ways—all meant to move the tiny calcium crystals that apparently get stuck in your inner ear canal and cause you to feel dizzy. Like, I’m sorry, what? Bodies are truly WILD.
So I’ve done these exercises, and look, they’re not working, so far (maybe I’m doing them wrong?)—I’m still dizzy as hell. But at least I’m doing something instead of shrugging and accepting it, letting it just spin me around until it passes.
Somehow the vertigo and the changing of the seasons feel connected this morning. I’m feeling a little like my life is in its own liminal season, full of fog and shifting light and wild swings in temperature. I’m 40 years old and yet things still feel so temporary in so many facets of my life. The disorientation can be dizzying most days. What am I even doing? Will anything work? Is there a point to any of this?
But I’m working on appreciating this season of my life for what it is, in all its uncertainty and imperfections and frustrations. There are also moments of the sublime and of quiet contentment. I don’t feel like I have my footing, but I am moving, I am taking action instead of just waiting for something to happen, for other things to pass. And there is power in that. There is peace to be found in the unknowing, too, the ways our lives don’t always fit in the boxes we thought they would, or the ways in which society or TV told us they would. Sunny days are gorgeous but the fog is beautiful too, if we pause and look at it instead of just trying to plow through.
Bright Spots
The aforementioned Taylor Swift album, Midnights. But also the new Carly Rae Jepsen, The Loneliest Time. Blessed with the bops this week.
If you ever find yourself in or near Niantic, Connecticut, do yourself a favor and seek out the Book Barn. It’s a magical place stuffed full of all kinds of used books, categorized in different little carts and nooks and outbuildings spread around an outdoor area with goats and funny signs.
New season of Love Is Blind dropped on Netflix last week and I just can’t quit it. It’s my favorite dating show on television, despite the bonkers premise and the fact that every single person on the show is definitely conventionally attractive. Though I will say I’m pleased to see a plus-sized woman getting some love this season. The Bachelor would never, infuriatingly.
Podcast love: This 2-part series on McGruff the Crime Dog was fascinating and fun. I have been a big fan of the Longform podcast for years and years, but this interview with NYT writer Sam Anderson was one of my fav listens.
Loved this issue of My Sweet, Dumb Brain about how our memories function like the ones in Inside Out.
Ugh, so sorry about the dizziness. My mother and I both get periodic bouts of vertigo and it is the worst. This is purely anecdotal, but we've both noticed that changing of seasons seems to exacerbate it.