fall has...fallen. it's always seemed to me that fall 'springs' much more than spring does. spring takes its sweet time in arriving. summer floats by, and then you wake up one morning to find frost on the ground and an angry mob of scary geese hissing at each other and doing their dirty business all over your backyard. i suppose i should be used to surprises by now. but autumn really got me this year. i have an old beer crate full of oil paints and mix-tapes and dozens of jars of paper cement from the days when i used to find great enjoyment in gluing objects to one another. i found a cd in the bottom of the crate and decided to give it a listen. it was music by some boys i used to know. some boys who used to be a band. a pretty decent one, too. i used to date one of them, for a short time. i remember him coming over and strumming my guitar while i cleaned my room, or writing silly magnetic poems on my refrigerator while i sat at the table doing crossword puzzles. we watched a lot of movies and we drank a lot of wine. i don't think we did much else. i started thinking about him, and about my old friends who used to come over last winter, all bundled up in their ugly coats and scarves and thick woolen mittens. i thought of emily, who would show up with wine and paint markers, and how we would spread paper all over the living room floor and scrawl fantastically long poems that stretched from the fireplace to the sofa. we had great plans, to go to marrakesh, to drink mimosas every morning in the student union, and to open a record shop called "the bum and the fish." and i thought of kevin, who would cook fabulous vegetarian dinners in my shabby little kitchen, and who once gave me a lovely book about mice as a christmas gift. emily and kevin fell in love, and i don't see them anymore. i don't have any pictures of them. i do have three photographs from a night at the teahouse when i initiated a 'public restroom photography contest.' we each got to take one photo. emily threw a roll of toilet paper and caught it flying into the wall. keving shot the split part of the seat in the front, which we had all previously decided was by far the filthiest part of any toilet anywhere. i just stuck the camera into the bowl with one hand and pressed the button. i was declared the winner, but then all of the photos are crap, so that's not saying much. i thought about all of these things and then i went out for coffee, and found myself wishing that i still lived in that overpriced flat in the old stucco house with the big dead pine tree grown flat against it. i missed the noisy poker-playing boys who lived upstairs and who used to go sledding on their sofa cushions. i missed waking up with strange bruises obtained by drunkenly attempting to skateboard in my dining room. and, strangely enough, i rather missed living on canned corn and saltine crackers. i don't know what any of this has to do with anything. i guess i just wish it could be last winter again, and i could be huddled on the sofa, skipping class and watching the news because it was fun to giggle at the reporters praising a pretty lady named edith who was celebrating her 102nd birthday, and at the "photo of the day," which was usually a snapshot some knob had taken of his dog wearing sunglasses. i have no idea where i'll be a year from now, but i only hope i won't be moping about wishing it was...erm...now, i guess. that sounded silly. but i remember last year, and i remember thinking "one year from now, things will be grand." i told that to emily once, and she pointed out that "grand" was "phony." before kevin, i think that emily was in love with holden caufield. before emily, kevin was in love with a different girl. i love canned corn and black coffee and white tea and the big lebowski and all of you, and when i was in kindergarten i once confessed my undying love to a little blonde boy named matthew, but it wasn't until years later that i was able to shamefully admit to myself that i only loved him because i thought he might grow up to look like the brave ascot-wearing boy from scooby-doo, who just might be the real love of my life. kirsten Care2 make the world greener! http://www.care2.com - Get your Free e-mail account that helps save Wildlife! +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. 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