What lives between give and take? Where is the edge between action and rest? What if it’s a cycle, like a snake eating its own tail? No clear end or beginning, only the motion of reciprocity. Generosity. Patience. Gratitude. I spent October living inside that rhythm, exploring a season of exchange.
This month opened with the smell of smoke in my hair from our campout at Atlanta State Park. Like the campfire turning wood to ash, the month opened with change as a theme. Some shifts were too personal to name, but one, two, three, they came rolling in with emotion and an equal measure of energetic drain. Time in the woods with friends helped steady the ground beneath it all.
The days after were made of re-entry. Chris moved through the house restoring order. I packed my pens and notebooks and got back to work. The world felt louder than I remembered. I kept thinking about rhythm. How everything asks for balance. How every gesture of giving wants a space to land.
Chris and I attended a Powwow in San Marcos. Just before the dance exhibition, a red-tailed hawk sang out across the wide blue sky, like nature’s own master of ceremony. Drums rolled through the air like thunder remembering itself. It was both invitation and reminder. Generosity is a circle, not a ladder. You don’t give to climb. You give to stay in motion.
Mid-month brought fatigue. My body asked for rest, but I kept showing up. Lifting. Stretching. Breathing through the ache. Strength doesn’t shout. It hums beneath the noise, patient and steady. I found mine again in small acts. A slow workout. A meal eaten with awareness. A walk beneath trees already losing their color.
The moon was full, then dark, then gone. Under its light I wrote two words: right action. Later, I replaced them with another phrase that came quietly one evening: move from your heartwood. The words felt like roots. The heartwood is the tree’s oldest part. The core that no longer carries sap but gives the trunk its strength. That’s where I wanted to live from. Past exhaustion. Past striving. At the center of what endures.
I set up a timer that acts as a nightly invitation. A reminder to put away the day and the devices. To clear a space in both my physical and mental landscape. I stretch. Roll out the tension. Let the day settle. A small act of closing. The room dims slowly, and in that dimness, I could feel October changing shape.
By month’s end, pumpkins had softened and the air had turned sharp around the edges. We chased thrills through haunted houses. Laughed too loud. Stayed up too late. Life felt full again, and fleeting.
When I think of October now, I think of exchange. Smoke and air. Effort and ease. Fire and rest.
A month that began in campfire glow and ended in candlelight calm.
A reminder that giving and receiving are just two sides of breath. The inhale. The exhale. The space in between where balance quietly lives.