Headrush Into Autumn

Tonight was the first night when it all went dark sooner than I expected.
"Autumnal" is the word I would use for an indistinct excitement related to in-between states. That's how today felt. It also felt like the end of something. Not sure what.

I walked far after work just to get the fumes of the weekend out of my system.
A humid, silver pall clung to the surrounding landscape. Even in the brightness, blue dimness lurked. A sudden gust and even a red leaf crispy under my shoes. A little bit of autumn's scales showing through.

Yesterday was a blazing day at the Folsom Fair, an event which to me truly signifies the last day of summer. Of course, it's always hot for that event, perfect for the solar-phallic cult that it embodies. Light reflecting off trash-strewn blacktop. Bodies gliding along in carnal disarray. Liquors and cameras, tongues wagging and other things too. Katy and I being famous in some nether-zone of the web but the evidence remains so far unfound. All you need really is a half-hour there to remind yourself that this is like no other city in the world.

So much light and liquid and picnicking and September birthdays and two more days off than normal, means that today I want to hide from everyone, mourn my dwindling finances and reacquaint myself with the solitary charms of reading and writing. I don't necessarily want to equate good living with hiding but sometimes that's the most realistic.

I'm reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History which, so far, is an amazingly sustained intellectual detective novel, while also being a college satire, a commentary on academia, and a heady "entertainment" along the lines of Graham Greene's "entertainments." Somehow I missed the boat on reading this book back in '92 when it scored tons of accolades from everyone from John Grisham to George Steiner.

What I love and fear best about the book is how much it reminds me of my friends and I back in college: similar archaic pretensions and Hellenic effrontery and Bacchic tomfoolery.

Taken, however, to a whole new realm of madness.