I always want to be one of the type of people who loves fall. It’s the perfect time to put on cozy boots and cozier sweater, cuddle up with someone else or a good book (or kindle), lounge under the sharp sun rebelliously fighting the cooling air, and enjoy pumpkin-spiced everything.
But as the lush, verdant leaves shrivel into dry, dead rust, as the thin fall air suffocates my lungs with its invisible ice, as the darkness of night swallows the day earlier and earlier, I am left aching and spent. Spring brought hope and summer belief but autumn is a reminder that all life rots like those damn rusty leaves.
In the melancholy of October, minutes stretch on, elastic and taut, snapping to the next after being pulled paper thin. You are sluggish with the sensation of coming down with something, body tingles and sore lungs. Your “The Lows” Spotify mood list, with its 223 songs, is the only orchestration that seems appropriate, despite it being filled with too much Coldplay.
You listen to “Swallowed by the Sea,”
and it’s everything you feel right now.
In the death of everything, hopelessness turns to apathy. Your ravenous hunger has faded and you’ve lost your appetite for anything. You just want to pour yourself a hot bath and melt into it, listening to the water rushing into water, burning your skin until you dissolve entirely and no one remembers you ever were flesh, bone, and thought.
More Coldplay. “Trouble” plays. “Oh no I see — a spider web it’s tangled up with me. And I lost my head, and thought of all the stupid things I said…”
I’m in the autumn of life now. The rotting leaves are beautiful in their reds and oranges and yellows, I ought to appreciate them. Every step is on leaves crunching under my feet, no longer piles to jump in with, but instead to clean up, launder, fold, hang up, do the dishes, change the diaper, buy the paper towels, make the dinner, make the bed, pay the bills, crunch the leaves, crunch the numbers.
I should enjoy the tea and the boots and the sweaters,
not lust for the sweetness of spring or long for the seduction of summer.
Next song. Radiohead. “No Surprises.” This.
“A heart that’s full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won’t heal
You look so tired, unhappy
Bring down the government
They don’t, they don’t speak for us
I’ll take a quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxide”
life with interest 