Fall meditation

No storms here but watching it unfold down south

Photo by Michal Pechardo on Unsplash

The Grasshopper Reader Letter, 10/9/24

The shortening of the days

Two days ago the weather here abruptly shifted into true fall. A chill breeze out of the north, skies covered in huge swathes of cumulus clouds with bright blue in the mornings and blustery spots of rain in the afternoons. And the suddenly early dusk and darkness.

I’m not complaining because this is normal, but not much else is. Hurricane Milton is bearing down on Florida and ahead of it tornados are blooming all over the southern part of the state. The news is full of dire warnings and they are justified- this thing is unlike any storm seen in the US in memory.

I’ve been following Kamala Harris’s progress through several of the interviews scheduled this week and the accompanying Trump wave of lies and paranoia at her every phrase. I’ve certainly written enough about that this week but one observation: Trump sounds panicky and the rage is making his obsessive narcissism and lack of any compassion hard to ignore.

But right now I’m just listening to the rain and wind outside and leaving politics aside for the moment. The rain and wind here are the innocent normal kind, not the terror we see down south. This hurricane season may be where those in denial are forced to reckon with reality, finally. Or not.

Like a lot of Americans, I’ve been texting friends in the storm zones, just checking in, as there is little that can be done right now. I don’t pray, not in the Christian sense (I am a Buddhist) but I like to think checking in helps a tiny bit.

Writers often wrestle with aloneness v loneliness. We need some kind of space and time to tap out the words you read here, but we also need experience, human experience, shared experience. Fall is a lonely season for many but the bright side is more time for writing and meditation.

The other night I was talking to a woman who called herself a content creator and an influencer, as though those were qualities of some kind of secret club. When I told her what I do and how much I write, she excitedly started telling me how I could rake in the money if only I went on TikTok and sold a course or told the world some product was wonderful.

When you’ve been writing online as long as I have, this is all old news and hype but to her it was real. I can’t stand the word ‘content’ when it is applied to the art of writing, which is storytelling and one on one communication. That’s what I aspire to here, both with a letter like this and my daily rants about politics.

I didn’t want to tell my new friend that getting rich quick is mostly a fantasy. Or that my interest is in gaining readers because of the quality of the work and the connections I’m trying to make. It’s why I try to keep the solicitations for paid upgrades or Buy Me A Coffee relatively unobtrusive.

It’s really gratifying when a reader chooses to support me and throws in a good word. I guess organic growth is more my speed.

I wish we could drop politics for a few days and focus on the needs of those in the path of the storm, but that is impossible. The right sees disasters as opportunities rather than a time to work together. It’s one of the reasons I send my observations out into the world. We need to be constantly reminded just how awful these people can be and how decent the vast majority of us are, regardless of party.

Stay safe,

Martin Edic

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