Season Cycle

Darling don't you ever stop to wonder
About the clouds about the hail and thunder
'Bout the baby and its umbilical
Who's pushing the pedals on the season cycle?

Just a few days ago I had the AC window unit running, pushing out steady little puffs of super-cooled air. Because I am a single girl and a cheapskate and all, I made that one window unit work my entire apartment over, bringing the humidity down and the temperature to something approaching comfortable. It's a unit I picked up from Tyler the week he was moving down to Texas with his wife - they had something like three units sitting on the back porch, looking for a home. See, in Texas, I guess, these window units would be 98 lb. weaklings even in the face of Houston's cold snaps. They had hoped to sell them, but alas, with a minimum of time, these were left to the last minute.

I got to choose one to take with me for a sweet family discount (read: free). I felt like I needed to check their ears for mites, or their noses to make sure they were cold and wet, and to maybe spend some quality time with each to make sure the temperament was a match, but the kitchenware still needed to be packed, y'know?

Its little digital face has been pleasantly darkened the last couple of days, as Fall appears to be sneaking in a side door and sitting at the table as if to say, "I'm not late. I was just, uh, in the bathroom, powdering my nose." It rained all last night. It was a lovely rain, doing that pitter patter thing, dripping from eaves and drenching the hedgerows and all that poetic crap. The wind was kind of tossing about a bit, and I felt more alive than I had in weeks, really. The summer hibernation that's been dragging me down feels like it's been lifting a bit.

Just in time, it seems.

This morning, something happened which I often forget about until it actually happens. Subconsciously, the yearning for this season is here, but the memories pack quite a wallop when I step out into the grey and the drizzle, and I can smell wet grass.

I remember early early mornings walking over to the high school with the wet leaves slapping at my shoes and ankles. The bus idling at the front doors, spewing exhaust into the near-freezing air. We all look bleary ,with our scripts and our newspaper clippings and our suits and ties and dresses and sensible low heels. We look so young. I've got my Walkman and my Tears for Fears cassette. I run my lines with Darryl, I run my lines with Raina. I stare out the bus window, rubbing away condensation with my jacket sleeve, watching the city-suburb turn into suburb and then into occasional subdivision. Farmland, even now, isn't too difficult to get to once you have Chicago's skyline as a dirty smudge in your rearview. This season is cafeterias at other schools, classrooms where we shout and murmur and declaim and persuade. We eat bad pizza, and we shrug on our coats to head back out into the darkness and back towards the city, brake lights and headlights sparkling in that rain that doesn't really go away until sometime in November.

I remember the blessed relief of walking across university campus without wanting to melt in the shimmering air. And oh, those season auditions in the main theatre, lining up a little like cattle, a little like a string of social security numbers rather than names. We can't wait for the parties to start at the Love Shack, so that we can be nicknames and knowing glances, rather than this weird formality that makes us shy and wary of each other. We'll be up each others' noses by the end of the semester, and we know it. I spend a good hour or so in the university bookstore, poring over the art school section, wishing I could somehow justify double-majoring in theatre and in painting. I'd spend some of my budgeted book money on those really awesome professional drawing markers that seem ridiculously over-priced until you use them. I still have a few, in an old Snoopy pencil pouch. They still work.

I remember this morning, waking up, the apartment just soaking in darkness, the streets sounding slick with occasional traffic, my phone beeping its alarm. Dish soap and candle and shampoo and perfume and clean clothes. Everything seems heightened and delectable. Summer is all well and good for those who like the heat, and become sun worshippers for those few months, but it occurred to me this morning as I was slipping on my shoes and grabbing a small umbrella that I like the contrast that begins to happen with the colder months. There is the blue of the outside with the warm gold of the indoors. Flavors and temperatures take on their own hue and melody line, because they are so easy to pick out. I have coffee here, and a slice of apple loaf (with bits of ginger, which is something they apparently created just for me), and the flavors are sharp and clear. I am not gutted by allergies, muzzled by humidity and insomnia brought on by the scourge of July and August. Differentiation is something to delight in.

I remember so many things. Each year, it is the same - the turned leaves of crimson and orange and burnt umber and yellow, fluttering down around me and sparking this motion of thought, this movement towards a celebration of light and dark, of hunkering down and getting to work. Pots of tea, soup with extra cracked black pepper, soft warm socks.

Who's pushing the pedals on the season cycle?
Round and round and round and round

(no subject)

Walking briskly has become fun again. I tried to teach myself to stroll a bit more casually, but it just doesn't work for me. I have to be booking it, White Rabbit style, but with much less overt fussing. The weather outside is cool enough that even I feel like maybe I should've grabbed a light jacket on the way out the door. As it is, I've got a long-sleeved blouse, an ankle-length skirt, and good solid black tights to see me through the day.

I was walking along Wells St. (did you know, there are a bunch of friends who will actually refer to it as 'your street' when talking to me about visiting Chicago? It's hilarious, and some have even done it independent of each other) and doing that whole falling-in-love thing again with the city. There were the poor sods handing out coupons to the hot dog place, a few construction workers copping a squat near the parking structure, which has some artfully-placed concrete benches, the El rumbling above me, the sound of everything sharp and bounced back from low clouds.

This is the time of year that I want to get up early and write things, and stay up late and sing songs. I want to go to art galleries and breathe in the snobbery and the loveliness, and go to hole-in-the-wall out-of-the-way restaurants, nursing a soda or a glass of wine, getting in some good people-watching. I want to write letters (on actual paper) to good friends, and I want to have more secret reasons to smile.