Dramatic seasonal interlude

September and October are flaying me alive, you guys.

Gorgeous. Powerful. Temperate. Months that a person wants to throw herself into with open arms.

The great civilization of green giving way, trees so intensely orange and red that to look at them feels like someone is shaking me violently by the rib cage; the wind in the corner sharpening its darts; the saturating, clinging smell of damp earth and drying plant... these are months when loves who died come barging back rummaging through all the closets in my heart where they left their stuff, and they hang it all over the place like it's some kind of yard sale/reunion party, and the party decorations are the damned red and orange trees that yell LOOK AT ME I'M ALIVE LOVE ME so that I ache wanting to be someone's sister again so we can just appreciate the insanely vibrant trees together, and every great song I hear rips whatever weeping that one keeps carefully hidden right up to the surface, and just when I am moaning Enough with the catharsis! the whole terrifying, gorgeous, powerful thing seizes me up like a whirlwind so that I want to do something tremendous, jawdroppingly beautiful with my life because time is precious and short — illusory love, a trick of the light, might be made real —

And then the leaves must be raked. Dishes must be washed and put away, endlessly. One sits at one's desk and acquits oneself competently. One pays one's bills.

I swear.

It's running that pretty much holds me together like baling wire at times like this.

I can run until all of this feeling is spent. I can run until the only thing left is thumping heart and re-inflating lungs. I can run until muscles hum. Running feels good.

It feels so good that running makes it safe to let myself feel everything else. Running makes it possible, in crazy September and October, to go ahead and love despite the heightened fear of loss. I can miss my friends as deeply as I want; I can be buffeted and frenzied by beauty and its brevity; I can go run that all out.

Run and run and run. Slow doesn't matter. Just translate the energy into a run.

And then return optimistic and ready to rake leaves, wash dishes, complete projects, joke and laugh with the living.

Huh.

It's a far cry from the days of using food as lidocaine.