Autumn Monday

Nearly 2 pm. Extremely humid and so hazy out it's like looking at the neighborhood through gauze. Not at all my kind of day.

Wish it was August, so that September would be right around the corner. I am looking forward to September, to Autumn. I'm really starting to hate this summer; it feels oppressive, stultifying, endless.

Not "hate". Too strong. There are some good days left of summer and --typically--I will regret the swiftness of their passing as winter's worst settles over the city. But there's a restlessness in me that is building, a nagging need to get going, get moving, move on, do something, make something else happen.

An image keeps popping into my head and hanging around there--it appears suddenly and without warning sometimes in the mornings, as I'm shaking off sleepiness and shuffling toward a shower, or in the middle of my workday as I'm tossing books back on shelves, or sometimes in the evenings as I'm laboring to get comfortable and give all my concentration to the book in my lap or the nonsense on my TV set--it's me briskly walking the length of Woodlawn Avenue, past all my old hang-outs, the places I used to live and the places my family used to live. The trees are blazing with color and around me the street is buzzing with activity: young mothers pushing grocery-laden strollers past chattering students slinging backpacks crammed with books, babysitters wrangling balky toddlers and Jehovah's Witnesses hawking Watchtowers, dogs straining leashes, dogs barking at postal carriers and garbage trucks, blowing, swirling leaves, churning water, swooping birds, zooming cars.

I am taking this all in, breathing deeply, savoring the cooling breeze.