After the Gold Rush

It is now October. I am listening to Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," it seeming appropriately October. This comes around every year and still the magic of it is as equally spellbinding each time. The temperature starts to drop, shadows get longer, there is a crispness in the air. It is time to shed some things, to slow it down a bit and take it all in.

This evening, Jacob and I walked down to the East River from our house, hurrying against the setting sun. The plan wasn't to watch the sunset but rather just to go for a walk. It's the type of weather you want to be in. There is magic out there right now in the air. I have really been feeling it the past few days. It's emotional weather, stuff seems like it is coming back - I feel like I am.

I am wearing shirts with sleeves and collars and I love hunching up my shoulders during a breeze, protecting my neck with my collar. I pull down on my sleeves and cover my wrists more. I am hugged my fabric and wind, various elements tickling my skin, a smell tickling my nose, and memories recalled of new school years starting, those moments briefly relived, an interest in Dave Matthews Band, an interest in Smashing Pumpkins, of new projected identities displayed for a new class of people, new pieces added to my wardrobe reflecting in some ways this new identity.

Most of my fond romantic memories exist sometime in the fall and so I am overlapping lots of those I walk around Brooklyn on a night like this early October one. I walked past the houses of two boys I used to see and where I used to hang out with them on fall nights like this one. I did this walk through memories with a beautiful boy who I live with now in this present that I only occasionally occupy. We walked down Grand Street, the street I lived on for several years when I first moved to New York. We got to the East River at that small little park, the sun already down, but the sky still in the throes of dusk, some beautiful fireworks still to be set off. There were young couples as there usually are there at sunset and families of Orthodox Jews as there usually are there at sunset. We made our way down to some rocks on the shore of the water, could hear the water lapping against these rocks, saw the Williamsburg Bridge become less and less distinct from the sky behind it, the sky becoming darker and darker. The buildings in midtown slowly started to light up. We made our way back home.