AUTUMN IN…

Hectic lately. You too?

Something about Autumn, my favorite season, when many things start up again (e.g. my nine-year-old is back to school) or seem to speed up and multiply (art openings, readings, new movies I want to see, etc.).

Especially “Autumn in New York” (one of my favorite tunes, especially sung by Sinatra).

A lot of birthdays this season as well, among family—Flynn and Jaina, Isabelle and Miles and Heidi—and friends—Ray DiPalma, Jim Keefe, Karen Allen, Terence Winch, Simon Pettet, Raleigh Robinson, Dennis Christopher, Jamie Rose, Michael Winch and Laura Askew—and I’m sure others I’ve forgotten.

One of the main reasons I moved back East after years in Southern California was Autumn. The seasons in the L. A. area weren’t what I was used to. Or didn’t produce the kinds of effects I was used to. They were interesting, hot Santa Ana winds from the dessert that made your hair electric, “June gloom,” “the rainy season” etc.

I missed the landscape of my soul, especially when it turns auburn and bright yellow, dazzling red and gold, and all the hues of this season that returns my soul to contemplation and gratitude.

Apple picking (when I was a little, little kid I remember picking apple’s at an uncle’s farm—the only one any family member ever had and not for long—from the back of my father’s pick up truck—now I pay for my little one to pick them from the low branches or climb to pick the higher ones) and pumpkin choosing (already picked, lying in rows on the ground as people scurry among them making their choices and a hay wagon rides kids around an oval dirt road that passes “ghosts and goblins” and familiar creatures from recent kid movies, and all the other Fall “activities” as so much play has now become).

I just got back from a ride up to the Berkshires, where the trees are turning beautifully, but later than usual, and the weather was unusually hot, more summer than Autumn, but with the air conditioner on in the car and the breezes causing leaves to fall here and there as I passed the trees lining “the scenic route” (“next 16.4 miles”) I could imagine Autumns of my youth, when the despised (at least by me, a Brooklyn Dodger fan back then until they moved and broke my heart, and a million others) Yankees are in the play offs once again, the familiar rhythms of school life had taken hold of my week days, and the kind of crisp air that’s hard to find some days these days seemed totally unthreatened…

Ah Autumn, has always held so many glories, personal and seemingly universal (though obviously confined in many ways to the Northeast of my childhood and youth)—don’t take that away too.