My feet are FREEZING today and I LOVE it! It's gray and damp and near pitch black by 7:45. Fall is here! And fall, in California, is quite the nebulous season. It is the physical representation of melancholy (which also happens to be one of my favorite words) -- of "pensive reflection or contemplation," as Webster's dictionary would put it. Unlike the people in Berkeley, the seasons here do not announce themselves with distinction. The leaves don't change, the wind doesn't blow. Rather, they slowly creep in -- a degree here, a cloud there -- until one day, when you realize that summer has slipped out while you were sleeping and you awake with a start to find autumn in your bed instead.
I love fall because it is good change. I have had enough of the unknown, unsure, unplanned, unstable kind. Fall comes to my door like a lover returning from a long, pained separation. It is new yet comforting, exhilarating yet rooted, surprising yet utterly known. It simultaneously fulfills my desires for adventure and stability. It speaks to how we are wired -- CS Lewis writes of the seasons in The Screwtape Letters, as he speaks of the undulating nature God has designed in humans... the seasons fulfill our need for cyclical change, or change that brings its own familiarity. Fall, to me, is as close as I will ever come to returning to the womb. It is grave and serious, making the moments of warmth and light stand out, as there can be no levity without gravity. If the other seasons were a bad Cameron Crowe movie with a dumb ending (and there is only one of those), they would say to fall, "you complete me."
Natalie hates fall. For her it is the tragic end of summer. Then again, we never had the same idea of a good time. Forever, she will exult in the beach and the sun. Her season gives mine a bad rap. I love the gray. The damp. The austere. And I will always root for the seasonal underdog.
On a side note, I think I need to become a vegetarian. More on that later.
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