A grown middle-aged man almost wept
in public today. He most definitely got
misty. He’s bald and his initials are
D.V. He's generally shy and withdrawn in his heart of heart, though he relishes the spotlight on occasion and has cultivated a public persona. He doesn't so much walk but traipses, like Big Foot in that famous 1967 footage. I guess what I’m trying to say is…well...it
was me. I was the aforementioned wretch,
and I’m not proud of it. I’m sure it was
a pathetic sight. Little children were
pointing and laughing, or so I imagined.
“Mommy, look at that idiot over there!”
I found a new place to go running a few weeks ago and have tried to get
away from the university environs to run there at least five miles on Monday, Wednesday and
Friday. That's been a tall order, given my efforts to pursue two careers simultaneously. I’m getting ready for an
upcoming 13-miler. Moreover, I told myself back in late August that I refuse to let the fall come and go as I usually do, without having gone outdoors to enjoy it a bit, however difficult it would be to make such time.
Anyway, today must
have been the best day of the year. It’s
peak autumn here and the weather was perfect.
One red leaf has the power to make me weep. Imagine a person like me being surrounded by
thousands of them! Well, it was a lost
cause for my pretense of old-school masculinity. Why did I get wistful and weepy, you
ask? I don’t know for sure. Perhaps only romantic souls get this way when
gazing upon the splendor of autumn. The foliage tells a tale of transcendence; those multicolored leaves appeal to something higher than this life—with all its rigors, routines, and heartaches—seems to offer. Likewise, the autumn breeze whispers in my ear perhaps my own hopes for an ideal world, a transcendent and boundless love. Yet most people are aware of the familiar metaphor of autumn, a season of decline. This orange and auburn enchantment, these magical spells, also bespeak of an imminent end, a “consummation devoutly to be wished.” For the record, what you read here stays here. I don’t need rumors going around that I have an emotional side, much less a mind rooted in the ethereal. Once I get past autumn I should be my normal austere and humorless self. So cut me some slack, would you? And mum’s the word.
