weather underground

Is it stupid of me to be excited about fall? The smells, the atmosphere. The memories, my goodness, floods of them, mostly school related. My childhood, again, I say, my goodness!

Slow down.

I should ask myself these questions:

1. What do I expect to be different about the fall?

Answer: Well. It will be colder.

2. Will rain patterns change?

Answer: No, they'll get worse. Two words: coastal storms. Two more words: gale winds. Three words: death by starvation. Culminating in one word: bleak.

3. So why be excited about fall and the oncoming winter of our discontent?

Answer: ...

...wait, I'm still thinking...

...hmmm...think think think...

Thanksgiving! Christmas! oh-my-gosh-this-chai-is-so-good! Do I even need more reasons? Just let me have my nostalgia, that's all I ask for. I'm taking -- oh wait, I'm sorry, did "Name" by Goo Goo Dolls just come on the radio in this coffee shop? I think it did. Wow, that was distracting. But, yes!, more nostalgia. Bring it on! Pile it! Heap it! Until it oozes.

I like how each season has its own feel and brings its whole "I'm new! Brand new! Buy me" with it. "Seasons?" scoff Oregonians. "What seasons?" But they're probably from out-of-town. Silly hipsters, Oregon has seasons sure as there's a nose on my face, it just takes a practiced...um...nose...to detect them.

The rain right now, as we near the end of September, is slightly brackish with faint undertones of something that reminds me of soccer (before I tore my quad), school (before I descended into the hellish, exhausting bowels of college), coffee houses in Eugene, things like bugs and plants dying, and the white room Tiffany and I lived in that first year. There's a kick in the air -- whiskey in coffee, perhaps. A sort of charged up current, something electric and brisk, but the light is mellower now and the water is even a different color, deeper and full of currents.

These little guys, however, takes all the joy out of the warmful-enclosedness: BED BUGS! Is anybody else as freaked out as I am that they're making a comeback? Did you know about this? The glorious bed bug revolution has dawned and we are just nurturing blood bags strewn along their paths to victory. We're those "healing" packs you see in video games. We'd like to think we're the soul-devouring mushrooms or the person with the really big knife. We're not. We're just breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Nations will fall before them. Businesses already are. Don't you read the news? There is no escape.

Bed bugs: Nasty and coming to a mattress near you. Hide your children, hide your wives. Etc.

Day 31: Nothing much

What reminds me that it is summer

is more than the total buckets of water I have poured in and on myself in a fruitless and vain attempt to stay cool and hydrated.

is the smell of water running from a hose a man is using to water the plants outside the bicycle shop, a metal smell that seems cleaner than it should and reminds me how I used to drink from hoses during car washes and garden duties and never thought about the fluoride or pesticide or any other Ides.

is the restless nights, the hunt for a cool spot on sheets intent on sucking up every bit of body heat and wrapping me in it tight as skin, and I complaining that my parents have sent me to bed too early with the light in the sky and the sun-hot air indicators of injustice even though it is 9:30 p.m. and I’m about ready to drop dead with the need for sleep.

is the smell of dirt and tomato plants, a constant feeling of being grimy and it not mattering.

is the desire to go utterly pagan and run around naked and happy.

is eating ice cubes instead of real meals, thus the weightlessness insubstantial nourishment brings.

is the water everywhere, beading on plastic glasses full of iced coffee, beading on foreheads of retired intellectuals in coffee shops who are drinking the iced coffee and reading the newspaper or staring at the streets where the heat is rising in waves making the roads look like rivers.

is the porch I now I have that I never had before, having never lived in a porch-type house, where I can sit with a beer or a glass of wine and think dark academic thoughts about lord knows what, perhaps Emily Dickinson. Maybe I’ll even dolefully strum guitar.

is the desire to get up early and go to bed late and wander not for the sake of wandering, but because it’s nice to squint into the sun and wear tank tops and eat fruit and pretend to be artistic.

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Recent storees:



After about a week and a half in the holding tank my forest story finally saw the light of newspaper dawn. Again, if the link doesn't work, try a Google search. Keywords to type in together are: Tillamook forest, Hinkle, Astorian. That should do it.

Also. THE WEATHER. Most esoteric story a reporter will be asked to write and I didn't do a very good job. Better next time...as usual.