Love / Fall.
Then there was that time I fell out of love with autumn.
I hadn’t noticed, at first. I’d all but taken it for granted, my affection for the September-November block. On the rare occasion that somebody might ask me to name my favorite season I’d readily reply with autumn, but that question grows rarer the further you get from elementary school, only making the occasional comeback during courting rituals. So I’d stopped saying it aloud. I stopped looking autumn in the eyes and declaring with sincerity that I still had strong feelings for it. I stopped making the effort it takes to really love anything.
I hadn’t noticed that I’d fallen out of love with autumn until I fell right back in love with it, walking home from the theater, close to midnight, the voice of Neko Case swooping through my inner ears like flocks of swallows approaching finale. The wind crisp and cool and casual, a wind that had nowhere to go, really, a wind that was just out for a stroll.
We bumped into each other on the sidewalk. I looked up and saw autumn again.
Hello.
There you are.
Did I lose you? I think I lost you.
How did that happen?
How did I lose you?
I reached out to autumn and found that quality again, that attractive dichotomy of simplification and surprise. Autumn, the traditional transition between summer’s climax and winter’s denouement, a time when the year begins to unravel and make it clear what it was…but also a time rife with complexity and sharp corners. The leaves, yes, will change and float to the ground, but in what order? In what color? What will it look like this year, the earth-based abstract art gallery of Variations on Time and Gravity?
Autumn impresses me.
Autumn earns my respect.
The act of being in love with autumn makes me want to fall in love with as much as possible, makes me walk in sprightly rhythms, makes me intoxicated on mere oxygen.
It is that love of certain desperate happiness, the possibility that a world is ending and nothing can be done about it, so let’s be happy this once. Let’s be very happy. Let’s be in love because we can be in love. It will all go away soon and it won’t be of any use on the other side of this moment, so let us use it all now, let us love each other in loose-limbed dance, let us love each other in the blood rush of vertigo, let us love each other in the long embraces of survivors.
That is my autumn. That is my autumn and I recall at last what and why. That is my autumn and I am in love with it.
Creative Control 