The time of early fall is an ambivalent time, a time of being on the edge. Summer is not really gone, but foliage is aging quickly and flowers are disappearing. The days may be warm and humid, but the sun is a March sun and could rise to frost on any morning.
I experience a vague excitement now, am in suspense as to just when the wind will change, look forward to the cold, feel relief at the end of the Dog Days, but I also wish that the season did not have to change so quickly.
And I enjoy lying between two very distinct spaces in the turning of the Earth, in a brief respite from clarity, disconnected and suspended in solitude.
This is a kind of twilight sanctuary, like luxurious waiting half asleep for daybreak, serious decisions in abeyance, choice still possible, dreams gone but their imprint still set in my brain like the impression of a wrinkled pillowcase on my cheek.
In September, I walk back to those places from which color and fragrance have faded but which have left marks of transition and renewal. I walk into the nostalgic dusk between fluorescence and rebirth, to an interim of faith in which I withhold commitment and certainty, and taste a momentary, delicious suspension of disbelief.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the third week of Early Fall. In the meantime, bask in the twilight between seasons, suspend your progress toward winter, procrastinate.
