11/11/11 Fall Fell

Overnight, the city has gone from the shabby end of summer to full blown fall. The ginko trees shed golden leaves in sheets as cold wind gusts down Brooklyn streets.

Katie and I walk west with clouds scudding overhead, past trees with brick-toned leaves. "Are they the same color as my hair?" she asks, knowing that, even in the fleeting sun, they couldn't possibly shine as bright as that.

10/30/11

We walk down the center of Ocean Parkway, a street designed by Olmstead and Vaux, in Gravesend. I'm doing research for the book I'm writing, part of which takes place right nearby here.

Katie and I try to process the monstrous houses that line the street, all of them fairly new, and wonder if the walking tour this book has sent us on is maybe a little too sanitized for my purposes. After yet another McMansion looms over our pathway, we agree they're a bit boring, and content ourselves with the glorious, perfect blue sky fall day we've been given in the wake of yesterday's bizarre snow.

11/28/10 Falling

This side street of Park Slope goes quiet. The holiday weekend, the sheer Sunday-ness of it all, it all boils down to this stillness, broken only by the sound of my shoes tapping on the sidewalk as I make my way to a friend's house for birthday brunch and sweet, sweet mimosas.

My vision, my ability to see, seems to expand until I feel like I can take in everything in front of me: the almost-bare trees, the washed-out-blue, cloud-chased sky, the crazy tilted sidewalk, the cars lining the street, the space all of these things fill, the ground of their being.

Above me in an apartment, someone begins to play an inexpert, but heartfelt "Rhapsody in Blue" on their piano, and the notes drift down from the open window, swirling around me like falling leaves.

11/24/10 Who really runs this joint.

The cat wanders the rooms of our (to her) incomprehensibly huge apartment, yowling in her wailing-baby voice. When I finally make my way into the room where she normally sleeps, I discover the window has been left open, and a chill breeze blows over the perch where she keeps a bored eye on the street below.

She watches me reproachfully, legs curled up beneath her, from underneath the table, as I stumble over to the window and close it after only three attempts.

Her wishes granted, she stands, arches her back, and trots to the litter box, claws clicking contempt on the wood floor, to let me know exactly what she thinks of my shoddy management of the home where she is, obviously, an unwilling prisoner.

11/14/10 She's had a Cold

We walk down Union from the library on a beautiful fall day. The air smells of spice and woodsmoke, and the light is golden beneath a blue sky wisped with high, thin clouds.

I inhale deeply, and say to Katie, "Man, smell that?"

She shakes her head sadly, saying, "All I've been able to smell for the past week is too much Murphy's Oil Soap and the liquor on my maitre d's breath."

11-4-10 Even in Park Slope? Really?

She left work at one in the morning, after serving at a private late-night party where Patti Lupone "hugged [her] like [she] was her long lost daughter." I've been up all night watching movies, playing video games, and editing a backing track for a song my band will be playing once we book a gig.

I've been feeling a lot less stressed lately, but as the hour rolls toward 2:00 AM, I start to get paranoid. I lace up my shoes, throw on a jacket, and slip a large pocket knife into my back pocket, and step out into the wet, empty street to go pick her up at the subway station.

10-22-10 Fall arrives - we fight off the chill

We come home late from our respective outings, she from work, and me from rehearsal, to find the kitchen a disaster and the sink stacked with dishes, courtesy our soon-to-move-back-to-where-he's-from roommate, but we still manage to find a clean cocktail glass for Katie and a beer for me. An amaretto sour and a hefeweizen later, and we're almost ready to go to bed, dishes be damned.

Fall creeps in around the corners of the windows and beneath the doors, his cold breath chilling us, and Katie, always more susceptible to the cold than I, hugs herself for a moment before proposing the perfect solution to the quandary of undressing for bed in our chilled room. "Want to fool around?" she asks innocently.

11/11/09 - Nicholson Baker's "Box of Matches" inspired me

Bicycling through Prospect Park on a mildly chilly Fall day, the leaves spin lazy whorls through the gray air like they just don't care. I taste that sour-spicy smell of decaying leaves, cold, and soil that is specifically fall, and nostalgia hits me so hard I almost start crying. So many good things that I had to destroy, so many things that I thought I could never have again, all coming back to me, and I am so grateful.

"I'm here," I say out loud, to remind myself that I am, and I put nostalgia aside for a minute so I don't miss a second, push the pedals again, watch the leaves gather into drifts on the side of the road.