the celestial reliability of seasonal change

is largely offset by the total unpredictability, in Colorado, of when it will occur.

or where. don't like the weather? drive up a couple thousand feet.

I remember two gigs, each on July 4th, one in Alma and one in Georgetown, when it snowed. the one in Georgetown was at noon.

take me now, Lord, I said. I've seen it all.

in my youth in Poughkeepsie, New York (it had "ugh" right in the center of its name), there was less weather than there was climate.

give or take two weeks, Fall fell right on Labor Day, as did Jerry Lewis (prat-Fall), as did the reenlistment of school. the change in the air, the turning of leaves, the -somewhat less dramatic than here- change in light, were all early September phenomena.

you needed a jacket first day back to school. and you needed it every day until my birthday, November 5th, when you needed a coat, and boots soon after.

not hiking boots.

huge shiny gawky geeky clunky black vinyl safe snow foot condoms, with latches designed by Meat Loaf, or Andy Warhol, or Rube Goldberg, some sadistic PVC loving foot fetishist. maybe eight of them on each boot, requiring at least one parent's full attention to fasten...try redoing them when they popped on the way to school, and with mittens on!

mittens.

boots, mittens, and an Ice Station Zebra parka. or three coats and scarf and a -nice try- knitted woolen cap.

earmuffs.

this is not clothing. this is gear. expeditionary equipment.

in Colorado, we take fascinated bets on when the first snow will fall. no bets on when it will disappear...the guy who picked "the next day" would pretty much win.

there was no first snow on the east coast when I was young. it was one snow, in installments. it would go into remission for a day or so, but from October to late April, it would move into the neighborhood and exercise Squatter's Rights. daily life continued apace, only occasionally slowed or very infrequently stopped by the deepening Ice Age.

to a kid, the snow was a medium.

like every yard, every street, had overnight been covered in tingling Play-Doh.

what was cold to a child? the coats and boots and gloves were just a gauntlet, like standing in line for a ride, the admission fee you had to pay to just get out there!

snow balls, snow men, snow forts, snowflakes in your mouth, on your eyelashes, in your eyes! four months ago, you waited for the ice cream man and his treasured Popsicles...now there are icicles on every hand, made of clean clear rain water! no need for an environmentally friendly water bottle dangling from the belt.

elation, the great Leveller of Climate! you weren't cold til' Six O Clock, when it was no longer possible to deny it was dark. and the screen door (that Dad had still not taken down) opened for Mom's none too gentle voice summoning you to dinner, and you had the sense from somewhere deep in the race that being out was starting not to be such a good idea. and you had forgotten there was such a thing as food but it was starting to pull on you as well. and it is getting a little cold out...

home.

one March, I am going to use the model of "in like a lion, out like a lamb" and, day by day, keep track of what animal the Colorado weather was really like.

there's always room for a new taxonomy, I feel.

I remember well the games that have been played with Fall here in years past. getting a bike the Christmas I was 35, and riding it that day. getting a new fall coat a few days before Springsteen played Mile High Stadium in mid September...pretty thick little jacket...wearing it to the show and freezing the whole time, wimping out and leaving at intermission...taking a walk on my birthday in 1981 in a good fall coat and marvelling at how bearable the weather was...doing the same on my 2000 birthday in my shirt sleeves.

they would call it Indian Summer down east, when there was a two week delay in chill in September...these days, it feels more like Indian Giver when some downright affable October weather is interrupted by seasonally appropriate cold.

people in Colorado really have no business commenting on global weirding. weather here is perennially weird...we have no baseline to measure by.

except this Fall.

I put the PA in the shed last Sunday, after the last gig of the summer, pulled down the aluminum sliding door and locked it...and for me, Fall was right there.

Wednesday night the air conditioner was on, as it has been...and it was bloomin' cold! last night it was off, and perfect cool sleeping weather.

I broke down and got a humidifier this summer. Air-O-Swiss. 2055D. I hadn't heard the legend of the wonderfully nurturing air in Switzerland previously...but this non-ultrasonic Air Scrubber did make the room environment surprisingly breathable...a little of the after-a-rain feeling.

I was glad I broke down. then the humidifier broke down.

because Everything I Like Must Go Away. everything that works is too good to be supported in our economy.

I won't give you the list. Ry Cooder albums. Fabe's sugar free pies. New Man clothes. the list is hundreds strong, and I won't give it to you, I promise.

the guy at Bed Bath and Beyond (store chain named by Buzz Lightyear) said that the Air-O-Swiss 2055D model was discontinued. lisa brought home an alternative.

Boneco, Air-O-Swiss' parent company (ok, who named that company?), said, no, the there was no recall of the humidifier.(their hold music was the most Swiss music I've ever heard.) we took back the alternative, and I ordered the 2055D online.

I called the online store...they were out of stock, none scheduled to come in. they called Plaston, Boneco's parent company...a grandparent then, I guess, named by some great-grandparent...

the 2055D has been discontinued.

I scoured the internet and found one. good price, too. it came two weeks later. the ad, the order, the box said "2055D"

inside was a 2055.

I tried it for a bit. not quite the same. sent it back. still haven't gotten the refund. I'm on my fifth humidifier.

so the 2055D in the bedroom now was kind of more expensive, missing some parts and didn't work when it came. ordered the parts, dinked with it til it worked. for now, I'm living on borrowed time, the humidity is creeping up, and the Swiss air is helping me.

what it does to the air is what Fall does to the light in Colorado.

even before the leaves turn gold here in the fall, the light reflects more golden off of them.

Fall light here makes the Summer light seem fluorescent, like the world has been in strip mall lighting prior. it's artist's light, portrait photographer's light, sweeter than Kodachrome.

I saw it as the big aluminum door fell shut.

maybe I just want Fall to start at the drop of the baton.

like I say, it takes a lot for me to want a summer to end.

I don't want this summer never to have happened. there was only one thing this summer I could want never to have happened. everything else was pretty darn cool.

Brian Daniell, court poet of this blog, said that this had been my second summer of love.

I know I cashed in a lot of love coupons this summer, and that my life looked a lot like the table in the Baileys' living room, after Mary asked Bedford Falls for help. ("I bust-a the juke-box" said Mr. Martini)

I'm grateful.

but the corner into Fall is one I want to turn.

kind of like when you get a ticket, and the next day it sure feels good that this is no longer the day that happened in. same consequences...but it was yesterday.

in the morning, in bed, if I put my right arm up over my head, I can feel for a bit exactly the same as I felt before the tumor grew and I had the operations and radiation. I can't, for that piece of time, tell that anything had happened.

otherwise, pretty much, yeah.

when I was having the radiation, I felt like the treatments were a debit I had to overcome and get through. now I feel that the radiation incurred a condition that my body has to recover from.

every index is up every day. but the debit is still there in each symptom.

now, I know that now I am comparing myself to health. that's huge. the possibilities included a lot more options than health this summer. somewhere from many to all of my precious connections to life were threatened. and, note well, the threat has not passed for certain.

so I get to whine that I'm not 100%. but I'm 100% alive, and 105% thrilled about it.

but healing. I'm tired. I ache.

I see the radiologist Dr. Davis on Tuesday. we'll probably pick a date in late October for my first scan.

I'm too contrary to worry about it. I have my health til someone takes it away. healthy until proven malignant. I'm quite content with living in my present life, with its present worries, and projecting that all will be well in all future scans.

the cancer was last season. I got through last season. it's Fall now. what shall I wear?