Those are our Octoberians. But the term now also applies to a claimed Gothic Industrial Culture – the type of Gothic-ness that vampire-idolizing "punks" aspire to, with their all-black outfits, spiked hair, belts and wristbands. It’s probably because October, originally the eighth month in both the Gregorian and Roman calendars, ends with Halloween.
Besides this trivial association with modern-day Goths, the month is also spooked with beauty, starting with opal for its birthstone.
Two-thirds of Librans celebrate their birthdays in October. They are generally betrothed to pulchritude, or are handsome people, like our premier fictionist and poet Erwin E. Castillo, who should be treating us to fattened calf this month, plus venison (read: tapang usa) brought down from some Sherwood Forest in the wilds of Tanay.
That’s balance for you, celebrators and celebrants. The scales of justice tip from one side to another when it comes to animal husbandry that leads to robust cuisine.
It’s a special month all right, especially in the West, where October is seen as that pause that refreshes, between the often-constricting seasons of summer and winter – yes, the onset of lovely autumn. The air turns crisp, the light magnetizes nature lovers.
Erwin it was who introduced us to John Gardner’s literary works, of which October Light can arguably be said to be his finest, maybe even better than his popular classic, Grendel, a retelling of the monster epic from Beowolf’s point of view.
Literary tricks galore are offered in Gardner’s October Light, from the roman a clef mingling of real people with fictional characters to the book-within-a-book device. This Gardner should not be confused with the British spy thriller novelist. Our Gardner is the literary artist John C. Gardner, who was also a writing professor, having taken an MA at the University of Iowa – our favorite campus in that now-paranoiac Mainland USA, and of which memories of early fall still linger in our senses.
October Light won the National Book Award. A pity Gardner left us early, in 1982, at age 49. He was macho and had alcohol and women problems. A lover, his writing student, Susan Thornton, eventually authored her own memoir, On Broken Glass: Loving and Losing John Gardner. Their relationship, described as both exhilarating and dysfunctional, started at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1979. John had a fatal motorcycle accident four days before their wedding day (his third).
His works live on: The Sunlight Dialogues (another novel), plus didactic, now classic non-fiction books – The Art of Fiction; On Becoming a Novelist; On Moral Fiction; and On Writers and Writing.
Our Gardner had such a common name that he was subject to disambiguation; he had many equally worthy namesakes, including a British composer and an American expert in jurisprudence.
Why, even his title "October Light" is much appropriated. Fil-Am writer Jeff Tagami of the Bay Area authored a poetry collection of the same title in 2002, published by Kearny Street Workshop, San Francisco. Of which a review last year by Barbara Jane Reyes, herself a distinguished poet, tells us:
"Jeff Tagami offers us poems in the voices of those who have experienced loss in his book of poems October Light. To begin with a violence, a loss of life, as in ‘October 23rd,’ we immediately understand the significance of October, and of Autumn – this is the ending of the cycle of life...
"Set along the Pajaro River of Central California, Tagami’s poems explore the intimate relationship between the land and those who work it. The Pajaro is the life vein of this community, a ubiquitous and ever-changing force; it is more than mere river...
"Its waters bring life to fields of cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes; its waters also carry the dead, as in ‘I Remember Fermin,’ where excess potatoes the boss says to dump into the river are expendable as Filipino workers. Tagami presents in metaphor a scathing critique of American Excess; food and human lives are so easily disposable.
"But far from lamentation or dirge, these poems are lovely and tender, hope-insistent, and here is where Tagami’s talent is more than apparent. In these poems so strongly imbued with sentiments of outrage and anger, Autumn’s darkness and its proximity to endings, there is still promise of renewal, for life is cyclical, and in death, one transcends."
Many others regard October with a special fondness. An editorial from Minneapolis Star-Tribune once championed its essence.
"If you’re outdoors this week, you’ll see it. October light, on a clear afternoon, seems to illuminate the trees and lawns from within. And individually – each leaf, each blade, each blossom on the aster glows independent of all others…
"October light is not imagined – a few moments’ Googling will demonstrate its popularity as a subject for painters, poets and songwriters, and of course the late John Gardner, novelistic champion of nature and small heroism. But neither is it easily explained.
"It is not an illusion generated by the turning foliage it illuminates, as many assume, nor the product of the frosts that may or may not precede it...
"Meteorology, on the other hand, has much to do with the phenomenon… (A)tmospheric pressure at this latitude is especially high in mid-October, circling the globe with an unbroken belt of unusually clear air. Humidity is low and so is airborne dust, thanks to sinking masses of cold air.
"That’s the science, more or less, but of course the most intriguing aspect of October light is not why it happens, but rather what it does. Go ahead and look: Across the lake, light fog is drifting out of reeds that suddenly seem extruded from brass or even gold...
"While you’re at it, mark a few weekend hours for getting off your usual routes and just a little ways into the unsettled world – the fields and woodlands where October light gathers in fullest force, and only for a week or two.
"The short gray days are not far off. Too soon, we’ll be struggling to remember a world of living color."
Photographers have become so obsessed with its magic that October light now also refers to a photo-sharing system, Flicker in the Internet.
Poets and writers of all ages have extolled the month:
"There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October." (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
"O hushed October morning mild,/ Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;/ Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,/ Should waste them all./... O hushed October morning mild,/ Begin the hours of this day slow/ Make the day seem to us less brief./ Hearts not averse to being beguiled,// Beguile us in the way you know./ Release one leaf at break of day;/ At noon release another leaf;/ One from our trees, one far away." (Robert Frost, "October")
"All things on earth point home in old October: sailors to sea, travelers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken." (Thomas Wolfe)
The movie The Hunt for Red October refers to the October Revolution in old Russia. Now there’s even a Blue October, a rock band from Texas.
A day after Lennon’s and Da Vinci’s birthday, the Taiwanese celebrate Double Ten, which may or may not be why we see a lot of moon cakes, of lotus seeds and whatnot, being sold these days in the malls.
My maternal grandmother, Lola Vicky, loved moon-cakes. Her birthday was on Oct. 30. She left when I was but a teen, her first grandchild, to whom she was truly devoted. For last Wednesday’s column for the "M" Section, particularly themed for Men’s Fashion, I mentioned in my "Memorabilia as Wardrobe" how Lola Vicky had once crocheted a nifty chaleco for me. And that I still keep it.
"October in Manila!" – Nick Joaquin ejaculated in his Portrait... My Lola Vicky would have found Nick very funny. I still find October quite sad, because I remember her, how she once saved me from the policemen who took me home one midnight after catching me peeing at some dark Manila street-corner in cool October.
Couldn’t hold it; sorry, Lola. She smiled and took a half-consumed bottle of Johnnie Red from my dad’s little bar, went out to the police car and tossed it in, then shooed the cops off.
That was my Lola Vicky, the first subject of a portrait I took with my first SLR camera. I visit her at the North Cemetery every year, on her birthday, without waiting for her month to turn into November.