October

I was walking alone across campus today just as a change of classes was taking place. Students chattered all around me--groups of three or four all talking at once or listening to one leader among them, pairs having conversations, singles talking away on their cell phones. I have a bad tendency to smirk, either inwardly or openly, at the frivolous things they all go on about. Then I passed a spot where two sidewalks merge into one, and two girls who had been walking along--at least one of whom was talking on her cell phone--came together with a "Whassup?" just behind me. Without turning around, I just walked and listened to them. At first they talked about the usual social stuff--none of which I can remember. One of them spoke to a boy passing by and asked him if he still smelled like peanut butter. I didn't hear all of what she said to the other girl after he had passed with "I'm good," but she had also smelled like peanut butter at some point, maybe when she got up that morning or when she got home last night. I didn't like to think how the two of them came to smell that way. Surely it was completely innocent.

They fell quiet for a moment.

Then, "I can't believe it's October."

"Oh, I love October! It's my favorite month!"

"Me too!"

This was different.

Hey, I said to myself, October is my favorite month! Suddenly I thought about these girls in a new way. This love of a particular month in the year we had in common. Why not other things? My own frivolous talk, for example.

I love lots of things about October—the temperatures, the painfully blue skies, the ever-changing colors in the leaves along the sides of the roads we travel and up the sides of the mountains we see all around us. I like the spirit of October as well. Although I’m far from a farmer, a sense of the celebration of harvest time still seems palpable to me, and the month inspires a contemplative mood. When I was a songwriter, October was always my most productive month. One of my last short stories--"A Poster of Marilyn Monroe"--was both completed and accepted for publication in the same October of 2004.

I also like the fact that mowing season is almost over. And yet, I enjoy mowing in these blue afternoons. The sun is warm, even hot, but the air holds that unmistakable chill. I can reach down and run my fingers through the "leaves of grass" and feel a coolness there that surprises on an afternoon at 80+ degrees.

I hope to write some this month. Of course, I have some writing I have to do at work and some writing I intend to do in this space. But I hope I'll write a story or a poem or a song--or at least work on one of these.

Welcome, October.


PS--The image above is another from the Comcast site.