It’s almost Halloween. I feel like a ballerina spotting one random point in space to keep from getting dizzy. Today, when I was walking with Belle under the big elm trees by Joe Martin Field, the leaves were falling and spinning to the ground, lodging themselves in cut blades of grass, green and orange. While they are falling, they are in between, just the briefest part of their existing. That’s what this fall feels like. It makes me think of being a kid and how I always had a sense of impending doom right when I was supposed to be the happiest. Wanting to stay in the fall, wanting never to land, knowing that as soon as the leaf hits the ground it turns ordinary.
In just a couple of weeks we will have to make the clocks fall back. It feels like a retreat, and maybe it is. Just a retreat inside, saving the heat and light that we have. The leaves know. They leave. That’s why we call it leaving. It’s so beautiful watching them fall that I have to stop until Belle snorts at me and keeps me from getting all weepy. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I wish it was easier to deal with the way the time speeds up. I want to slow it down without feeling like I have to hide from everyone. I want to stand in the falling leaves and know they’ll be falling forever.