Autumnal Transformations & Elements of Change
Dear Beloved,
Autumn equinox is this Sunday. The next time I write you, it will be fall.
This has always been my favorite season - a time when I feel most alive, dancing between summer and winter amidst changing leaves’ vibrancies. I love the harvest, the squashes and corns, the pumpkins and walnuts. I love watching migrations swoop in gray skies and listening to ancestors’ stories told during long nights. I love when boundaries between worlds blur and we sit at the precipice between here and there. I love when spirits of old revisit us, and I love the rituals honoring them. I feel most connected to the land in the autumn, to the world as it turns and when seasons change.
In recent years, however, autumn has brought me soft sighs of relief. I pray during these times, offering thanks, as my family and I live through another season of smoke and ash. This year in Coast Salish lands, I am especially grateful for a summer without heat domes or air heavy with wildfire smoke.
I also mourn this season of transitions during empire-driven climate crisis, as I find myself wondering: Will my future children know what autumn is beyond the old children’s books I will read to them? How will future generations celebrate changing seasons when ecosystems collapse? What will my grandchildren say to me, knowing that I lived and watched while their futures were made tinder for oligarchy? How will my descendants look to me now, and what can I do now to be a good ancestor to them?
How do we transform ourselves and our world in autumnal transformation? How do alchemize these systems, creating circular economies and networks of mutual aid? How do we dismantle industrial complexes and heal from their harms? How do we build community-based programs, free from profit-motivated opportunists?
How do we liberate ourselves from empire?
Months ago, on the eve of summer solstice, this newsletter transformed into seedgiver. I referenced prescribed burns and talked about pyrophytic plants whose seeds are activated by fires. Natural, low-intensity fires burn away organic matter and break down nutrients to enrich soil. Fire is medicine. It is an element of change, a terrifying but awe-inspiring force that activates us towards a better world.
We must bring back good fire and harness it to restore not just our forests but also good ways of living in reciprocity with the land. We must burn down old systems that never benefited us, and we must burn our own internalized biases and scarcity mindsets.
Rome was not built in a day nor was it dismantled quickly. Today the Roman Empire’s heir is the single most destructive force in human history, and it has uprooted millions, destroyed communities, facilitated violent coups, and continues to sicken and disenfranchise populations in the name of capital. But like its grandfather, this empire too shall fall. We are observing its inevitable collapse now.
So, Beloved, I ask you: how will harness elements of change to burn empire’s influence in your life? How will you connect with people around you and collaborate to dismantle this system? How do you honor revolutionary ancestors, and what choices will you make to become a good ancestor yourself? How will you love?
Autumn In Peninsula
I am glad to hear that the endless summer is not really endless. Our emperor and empress ordered their painter to let the summer constellations stay forever on the ceilings of their detached palace, but all the stars dropped on the floor as soon as the painter died of cadmium poisoning.
Rulers tend to think that people are nothing but the ears of rice plants waving in the wind, but we know the truth is always carried by the late summer wind. The farmers sprinkle pesticides on their paddies just like magic rituals, but they have no faces under the sun.
When autumn comes, the sickles take us away from the reticent ground. We dream a golden dream in the dark granary. Our emperor and empress also dream a dream, a dream of endless summer. Their faces are sweating excessively while sleeping in each bedroom.Written by Satoshi Iwa.