What Fall Does
There are moments, and they are rare, that you look up and find yourself living a new life. Not just inhabiting it, but living it. You’re out drinking beer at a grad school function. You wander back from one room of the bar to the other, talking and laughing with the friend you made five weeks ago, and there, at the table where you left them, are your friends. It’s home.

And it’s weird to realize this. Fall does something strange to me, to everyone I think, to some extent, but since I’m all weird and like, sensitive about this shite, I notice it in this intense manner every single year. One friend of mine says fall makes her manic and unstable. To me, it does something different. Something quieter and more thoughtful, but just as intense.

Here’s what I think: That in fall, we realize again that we’re vessels, vessels who now want to be emptied out of the old. The new faraway sun makes us realize what we didn’t when the glare was so hot and hard: We can see, suddenly, what’s not working for us, what’s making us uncomfortable. It’s the chill, and the way the sky feels bigger. Limitless. It makes me want to take on new, good habits. I am active, my muscles stretch and stir in air that is finally breathable again. And I am pensive and thoughtful and wistful. I want nourishment. Hot chocolate and chili. I want to talk for hours and be alone for just as much time. I want to listen to Richard Buckner and Diane Cluck. Spring is a time for romance. In the fall, I want to feel the truth like hard dirt, grit under the nails.