How nauseatingly nostalgic. Autumn makes me sappier than a sappy New England maple oozing sap, and as cold air seems to have finally found its way back into the Blue Ridge Mountains, I find myself pining for days gone by.
Alas and alack, where does time evaporate to these days?
And what makes autumn the season of reminiscing?
And does the neutrino have mass? If so, is it great enough to account for the calculated values for the rotational inertia of orbiting galaxies?
And why don't I have any friends?
I find myself lost in a sea of questions stirred up by the autumnal wind. You've heard of Spring Fever; I think I have Fall Dysentery. It's driving me crazy. I sit in Starbucks sipping hot chocolate, reading Proust and listening to John Mayer. I occasionally turn to my leather notebook to write a few verses with my fountain pen:
Autumn / The ducks fly south / I speak to them / Quack / Quack / Quack / My soul weeps
It's a work in progress.
Granted, it was 80 degrees five days ago, but weather.com says that it will finally be autumn in Charlottesville this week, and I couldn't be happier. I appreciated the encore presentation of summer weather (and would have probably appreciated it more had the heat been turned off in my dorm) but lying awake on Nov. 3, listening to the soft song of crickets, I couldn't help but think "Shouldn't you be dead already?"
I think I'll expand that into a poem.
Autumn tastes different, smells different, sounds different. Nothing beats pulling the covers over your head and going back to sleep on a fall morning when your bed is the safest, softest, warmest place in the world. The sun hangs lower in the sky, and after a few days you get used to the novelty of being able to see your breath in the middle of the afternoon. It feels like being five years old -- jumping in the leaves and coming home to cookies and milk after school. It's football weather, fireplace weather, curl up with a good book weather. It's the kind of weather that makes you want to hold your girlfriend a little tighter, that makes you homesick, that makes the sound of a midnight train's whistle into something romantic.
And apparently, it's the kind of weather that turns me into a woman.
I'm sick of short-sleeved shirts and sweating on the way to class; I can bear to put my flip flops away until spring. Bring on Thanksgiving and apple pie and afternoons that get dark at 5:00. Because fall means that winter is just around the corner. And winter means Christmas and snow (!) and hiding inside from gray days and cold nights.
Then, come March, when you can't take it anymore -- when seasonal affectedness disorder has driven you into therapy. When another cold day might push you over the edge, lo and behold, here comes spring. And then summer, and beaches, and lying around doing nothing all day.
But for now, the air feels good. It recharges, refreshes, brings back a lot of memories. Consider it Wheaties for the soul. I guess autumn makes a lot of people think about endings. We buy new calendars to replace the ones we'll soon throw out. We take final exams and plan out new courses. We're always preparing for the close of the year so that we don't have to acknowledge the inevitability of its eventual passing. If we're prepared enough, maybe we won't feel the transition. The dates will change, but we won't feel the break. We won't realize that 12 months have passed.
Autumn reminds us that we really don't have much control. In the end we're like so many falling leaves and there's not a thing we can do to predict what pile we'll end up in. Or which kindergartener will stomp on us on the way back from school. Or which heartless gardener will shove us into trash bags.
Man, life sucks.
So we shudder against the wind and squint at the weak sun and say things like, "God, I can't wait until spring break," and manage to forget or ignore the sight of the golden purple orange mountains or the way the stars stand out against the cold black sky.
Thanksgiving is in two weeks, and it will be the first time that I go home this year. Christmas break is only three weeks after that. I feel ancient already. Tour groups make me feel like an old man. I think I'm going bald. I have arthritis. By next fall I'll probably need a walker. Oh well, I'll still jump in the leaves.
I just hope my hip doesn't give out.
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