It is nice to be sitting here on the far edge of August, dangling my legs over the ledge and waiting on the cool September breezes. Most people seem to give Summer up for dead when September comes along, just like people give Autumn up for dead when Thanksgiving comes and goes. I can't say I disagree, but I think we should give these interesting lame-duck seasonal periods their due. September can be scorching and dry just like December can be pleasantly crisp and green. But that isn't the point...well, I suppose it is. September and December are bothersome unpredictables and ruin the 'purity' of each Season's disposition. December is usually at its snowiest and coldest in the early or middle parts of the month, when it is still Autumn (though, I should add, that I like to separate the season into 'Autumn' and 'Fall' just for this reason). September usually bears the first frosts and the earliest mentions of color change when it is still technically Summer. I suppose that irks people. Or it doesn't and they don't even give it any thought and it is just me sitting here musing on something about which nobody cares. That is probably so.

Actually, my mind is restless. I spent the entire weekend working outside and reading to keep my mind from wandering too far afield, but also to keep it from fixating too closely on any one thing. Actually, any specific thing. Actually, a specific person. But that is neither here or there. Or is it 'nor'? I would think 'or' because, with 'neither' in the sentence, 'nor' makes it a double-negative. I really don't want to waste time thinking of this, but there you have it. Once again, I am laboring to keep my mind away from fixating. That is largely why I am writing here now. At this hour. At this moment. I write because my phone calls and messages go unanswered and I don't hear and word at all and my mind overthinks it all and believes the worst. A run-on, incoherent sentence basically sums it up. There you go.

Have I ever mentioned how much I like some of Enya's songs? Ha. I don't often admit to it, but some of these songs really make you hear just how incredibly ethereal her voice is. I do not usually find myself enthralled with the ethereal, but sometimes you have to take notice. Sometimes you have to forget about the rational and Reason and let yourself swim in those murky waters at the bottom of the glen. Does it make sense? Perhaps. I won't pretend that it does. And I won't deny that it doesn't. I will stay mum. I just happen to find her songs soothing on a level I normally don't recognize. So there is that.

There is more to say. Maybe tomorrow.

The Summer is fading slowly and luxuriously. It is like the sliding knob on an old light fixture. Or the laboured cooling off of a cup of coffee over the course of a good breakfast. The air is changing. The colours are changing. It is mesmerizing.

I've been watching Summer simmer down for a couple weeks now. Scrub bushes are going red and then drifting into a desiccated brown. Spectacular sunsets set-up spectacularly hazy night skies. The Moon competes with fog and mist and the accoutrement of seasonal battle. I love it all desperately. I love all of the seasons, really, and I could never really be forced to choose one over the other. But it is now the end of Summer and the advent of Autumn, and therefore I will choose to love this time of year the most...for now.

And, like the seasons and their moves toward battle, I am moving tectonically toward being in love. Oh, the slow pace of physical geography! Is there no better way to move into such feelings? Is it not better to savor the world around you and translate it into how you express and interpret your feeling? I cannot imagine anything more proper. I hope she thinks along similar lines. I hope she imagines me moving along fault lines and volcanic chains. I hope she understands that my movements, while slow, are imperceptibly strong and decided. That there is change and flexibility, but also permanence?

Her hair smells like rain. Like Spring rain, to be exact. It is the scent I detect every April when the winds begin to change into breezes. When the first green buds and shoots contribute that initial burst of fresh oxygen into the breezes that pass gently over the gumwood sill over the desk I sit at. I smelled that in her hair. Just as I saw the placid waters of the Finger Lakes in her eyes. No seas or oceans in that blue...no. No, that blue is as the waters of giant freshwater lakes tucked into the folds between glacially mounded hills and surrounded by vineyards, fallow meadows, forest, and golden strawfield. Without any doubt. I see it in my stolen glances.

Shall I continue like some callous-handed Apollinaire? Shall I speak of her easy smile that hangs like a phantasmigoric Crescent Moon in the night-time sky of her cosmologically profound face? Is that awkward? Yes. Do I care? No. I am grasping happily at straws and waiting for cars, buses, trucks, bicyclists, pedestrians, baby carriages, demons, demigods, ancient warriors, Druids, kings, earls, re-incarnated Lamas, pashas working for the Levant Company, and the ugly traders plying the backwaters of the Hudson Bay. I am waiting for all of them to pass by me so that I will have more time with her alone and away from the things of man. Away from the encumbrances of modern life. Away from distraction.

Oh, sing. Write like Neruda and dance like Borges in his mind. Read them all in the original Spanish and feel the breathy heat in their words. I guarantee that if you read the Spanish original aloud, you will feel that heat. You will feel the dust of the Pampas collect in the back of your throat as you makes your way across Patagonia toward Tierra del Fuego. And back North. And sing. Again.

Sometimes the major propellant through life is something akin to the shrug of the shoulders. Lurching forward one shrug at a time. Like a muffled breaststroke through soupy waters. Well, at least, that's how it feels to me sometimes. Information trickles in and I respond as the glacier responds to gravity.

You know, I am really not getting to the point. I am avoiding it and trying to sound word-y. Verbose. Whichever.

You become enamored of someone over the course of a couple years but never say anything about it because it doesn't at all appear to be headed anywhere. She comes and goes and you follow those comings and goings and you let it flow over you like a small creek. One day, she comes around and - as if she has read your mind - she tells you that she knows how you feel. And she says that she feels the same way, but that because of so much baggage and uncertainty, she cannot reciprocate or let anything manifest itself in her life. Which you agree would probably not be too good an idea.

Then it becomes like every other time. If-it-weren't-for-this-or-that-we-would-be-perfect. There are always so many conditions that hinder anything from moving ahead even an inch. I never see the need to challenge any of those conditions because I do not want to lift them up and be exposed to what is actually underneath them. It is better sometimes to just accept the facade. It is better sometimes to just be a mensch and swallow your pride and your self-worth and move ahead without them. Which, essentially, is to move ahead alone.

I spent the last couple hours before I went to bed last night trying to find something in my reading that would give me something to mentally rally-round. I wasn't into it. I couldn't find anything because I couldn't get my head going to begin the search in earnest. This is no case of melancholia. No. This is simple disappointment. At least she left me with glimmers of hope. That is more than I have ever received.

I am too lazy to write complete sentences and paragraphs. I am not in any mood, really, to order my thoughts into correct grammar and sentence structure. I suppose that makes this worth a little less than it normally would had I felt the need (and had the energy) to write it out fully, but c'est la vie. Right?

Where to begin? Summer. Hot. Unseasonably hot for Upstate New York. Unseasonably hot and dry for this land of perpetual clouds and fresh water. Mosquitoes and flies by the thousands...even this late into Summer. And despite the dry-spells. And so on. Everything is two weeks ahead of schedule. Plants, animals, weather. Even people. Kind of. Not really. But the idea is the same.

Tomatoes are catching a bit of the Early Blight and the Fusarium Wilt. Yellowing leaves and some small splotches of brown. But the fruit is forming and there has been some success with the Zebra Stripes. Even the nearly and apparently dessicated Italian Heirlooms are producing. I cannot complain too much.

Peppers are dead, killed by a disease that wasted and runted them. I assume it was from the nursery I bought them from. Next year I have resolved to grow everything - everything and anything from flowers to Eggplants and Peppers - from seed. Finally.

Corn is seriously depleted. There was a heavy rain several weeks ago that basically drowned the corn. It has yet to recover fully. Along with Cucumbers. And some of the Sunflowers. But whatever.

I had a good, long look at Jupiter the other night with the telescope. I could make out five of Its moons (forgive me for forgetting the names...I believe Ganymede and Io were two of them) and I could faintly make out two dark, almost red-ish stripes on the planet itself. I understand those stripes to be elements of the Jovian atmosphere. Jupiter is beautiful, but it does not have the same enchantment as Saturn with its spectacular and almost unbelievable rings. The Moon is a constant source of amazement. At 4:30 AM, the Moon is half-heartedly illuminated in its particular phase, and the whole of the Moon is somewhat visible as a darkened grey in contrast with the bright, white Crescent. It is all so gorgeous and it takes your breath away.

There are moments throughout the day when the pressure of loneliness almost tugs at my chest. And my mind and its attendants rush into the fray to dislodge the invader.

There are no maps for this region. Wandering with no instincts for it at all.

Wedding Season. One this weekend and one big one next weekend. Terrible opportunities for contemplation and reflection.