Writing October, The Conclusion

It feels almost like summer today. The sun is right on top of us here in Colorado's Front Range. This is the whole reason why people are moving here, well, that and the weed. It hardly feels like the close of October at all.

The light is bright white too. The wind of the last few days have stripped all the trees in my little town and that only makes the sun even brighter. I don't know how I feel about it. The naked trees have helped me to see certain aspects of the neighborhood and the town that I did not see when things we obscured by the modest foliage of summer.

Writing October, Part 3: Janice's Notions of Transitions

The days have been really stunning here. Here it is, the end of October, the days are warm almost summer like and I still have tomatoes growing in my garden. The nights are cool, but they are not even hinting of winter despite the snow capped mountains just a few miles away from us. I've been doing my best to see each day for each day filled with its own light, uniqueness and flavor. I'm doing my best to enjoy October.

Janice loves October. We were talking about how we differ in our favorite months. I like February, but that is perhaps another story for another time. Janice loves October because she believes it is the most transitional month of the year. I brought up October 2010 to her recently. That was a great month, October 2010. We moved out of a cockroach laden apartment in Denver's Capitol Hill on September 30. We moved in with our dear friend Jana (another Umbrella Factory Worker) on Denver's west side. On November 1, 2010, we left. Denver and Colorado vanished in the rear view mirror as we pushed west then north to Oregon. Yeah, October 2010 was a transition, as Janice said. Her claim, of course, is that all Octobers (at least for us on Colorado's Front Range) are transitional. On a small level, this may be true.

Writing October, Part 2: Death and Imaginary Friends

The rain fell for most of the night last night. A cold rain, but then, here in Colorado it's always a cold rain no matter what the month. There was some sort of government, city wide alarm that woke me up just after four this morning. Just after four in the morning, this used to be bedtime, but things have changed. I listened to old recordings, Syd Barrett and Nick Drake. I covered up in the bed and awaited what would happen.

It's now, or very nearly, mid-October. The leaves are changing and in my little town, it's pretty. I try to see the beauty, which is oftentimes just the colorful leaves on the trees. I have to overlook the brown and gray leaves which have fallen and are clogging up the gutters and making oily water pools above the rusted storm grates.

Writing October. Part one: reflections on Octobers past

These first few days of October have been beautiful here. The days are warm, the sun is on its rapid decent to the south. The air at night is cool, crispy and dry, like one might expect in Northern Colorado. The air smells like drying leaves, which I kind of like. In a way, the nights in October bring me back to very simple times, at least the simple times in my life. I think about the first year I was back in Colorado after the war, 1992. I seem to remember all of those days and nothing specifically at all. I think about a few years later, perhaps 1993 or 1994, or 1995, when my dear friend Mendy and I wandered around the old neighborhood of Capitol Hill and talked life. It is the old neighborhood for me, and for Mendy, the old neighborhood is gone, and the neighborhood where she lives now is 25 years older...or the case of modern Denver, 25 years new. It's October now, 2016, and I haven't liked October for years.

I find the process of life to be tremendously interesting. I mean, I normally don't like summertime, but I was excited about summer this year because I couldn't wait to get the garden going or to catch crawfish in the creek with my son. We did get a few crawfish, but all summer my garden suffered under the heat and searing sun. Oddly enough, the first week of October has found my garden looking the healthiest it has all year.