For the past few weeks, I’ve been enraptured by a distinct autumnal feeling. A very specific chill in the breeze gave rise to it after several months of gloomy, overcast weather. To top it off, last night I got the smell of a fireplace in my nose – the neighbors had a pit burning in the backyard.
Despite its position as a tocsin for winter, I love fall with its golden light, crisp air, and earthy colors. 
But the external application isn’t the only source of fall’s healing. It often signals a big change for me, for during the autumn months I have moved numerous times, ended jobs, started jobs, ended relationships, started relationships… The fall of 1992 was particularly productive as I became a vegan the day after Labor Day and a gay right around the election. (An OUT gay, to be specific.)
So, fall and I are comrades. We collude to stir things up in my life, geographically, emotionally, what have you.
Though I try not to be, I’m also rather sentimental about the holiday season. It’s like muscle memory that is embedded so deeply inside us as kids that we can’t seem to shake it. To be sure, my rational mind finds much fault with the sugarfest that is Halloween, the slaughterfest that is Thanksgiving, and the consumerfest that is Christmas, but somehow the thought of sharing “family” meals, drinking warm cider, and watching leaves change overrides all of that. God bless societal conditioning.
Like so many conflicting items on my agenda, my affection for autumn is at fierce odds with a recurring desire to live a tropical life. As alluring as a constant temperate climate is to me, I also fear that I would miss the evolution of the seasons that serves so brilliantly as a marker of time’s passage. It’s also just not right to wear shorts at Christmas time. There should be warm sweaters and cozy scarves and crackling logs.
As a kid who loved football, no doubt part of fall’s appeal was the start of a new season. Once I moved on to play basketball, that was yet another bonus. It’s not that I necessarily enjoyed school, but I obsessed over my new notebooks and binders each year. And, yes, having a December birthday likely added still more fuel to the fire.
Maybe part of it, too, is that the end of the year is on the horizon. This year, like so many before it, has sort of sucked for me. In fact, the whole damn decade has been pretty rough. That makes me relish the pending demise and birth of another annual stake in time.
So, as I welcome September’s arrival and know that the Radio City Christmas Spectacular is just right there – as is Dick Clark’s Rocking New Year’s Eve – let me savor the glory of autumn and all that it bears… hoping something in its bounty will move me forward yet again.
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