the imp of the perverse...

I am having a moment.

In less than twenty-four hours, I board a plane for Venice-- and I'll be gone for 10 days.

... and so, of course, as I was wandering around in the pre-dawn this morning... I started to feel... odd. Of course I'm excited and of course it's going to be wonderful, but you don't really appreciate how much you love your home until you're about to leave it.

The days are just starting to cool off a bit, and we've had some wonderful salty breeze coming in from the ocean. Everything's taking on that "roasted" scent, which means fall in Southern California. The very strange, rather wonderful wild blackberries that grow along the road that traces the ridge are finally black enough to eat-- after one wipes off the various carcinogenic pesticides and smog compounds. And the summer construction workers are *finally* packing their shit up-- which means that I (selfish me) can now walk along the roadside and not have to worry about squashed by a cement truck. Prius, yes. Cement truck, no.

... and oddly enough, I always associate this season with "glow". It's something about the light-- maybe it's the angle of the sun?-- that changes from summer to fall. The mountains were all misted this morning (LA is also the "Land of Smoke"... if you're more into the Native thing), off in the distance. And yesterday, I was walking and staring at the trees, and leaves were green and alight.

When I get back-- there'll be a spark in the air. I think that the hills around here must burn off all the heat that they accumulate during the summer in the early fall. Culminates at the end of October-- who believes in ghosts?-- but there's always the feeling of things crackling towards the end of that month-- at least for me. Fall's not harvest time so far south, so going into winter means something different than it does in other places. A time for releasing energy rather than gathering bounty. Change-time.

... well. That's all well and good. I like Fall. But now-- because my disposition is not a cheerful one-- I'm also thinking about how... temporary... things are right now. Rented room, applications to fill out-- don't know what I'll be doing 12 months from now, but I don't think it'll be here. Not in this section of the valley, at least... which I have had the immeasurably poor taste to fall in love with. At the very least, I'll have to go towards the center-- maybe to Atwater Village... please God not the West Side. And if I am both very lucky and very unlucky-- not in the States at all.

It's too bad the world's so big-- because then you get caught... you want to see every corner of it, and also to never leave your home. Something to be said for the world being one town, and then several more down the road a little bit-- then you can do both. I suppose it's easier to think that way, though, when one's "little home town" is a sprawling city of 10 million people, hm?

It is either endearing or infuriating that I can be thinking this way before a long vacation-- but that's just how I am. I need to figure out how I can be like Kant-- and never move out of this neighborhood, and take a walk the same every morning, the same route with such regularity that people can set their watches by it-- and still drag the world around on a string despite such strangeness.

... it starts, perhaps, by obtaining a UCLA library card... if the library will not come to Eagle Rock, I will go to Westwood and bring it back in a duffel. Oh well. Maybe all that petrified creativity from the Rennaisance will leak out of the stone and into my head, and I'll figure out a better solution.