here comes the new season

So this is how it begins. I wake up one day and the world has changed from the night before. The big freeze has set in. It'll be 5 months before I see the river again, it's all ice now. There's a foot of snow on the ground and a foot more is blowing in on that cold north wind, to look out the window is enough to make you shiver.

It is pretty though, all crisp and clear, with the moon peeking through, and the street lights bouncing off all the white, I could mistake this midnight hour for dusk. And then there's the sound... yes, I can hear the noise of frosty feet and tires come tumbling down the snowy tunnel of old Westiminster and float right up to my window... I've maybe three months before the cold rubs the shine off it all. I'll miss this time of year when it passes.

I was thinking the other day that cities or towns might well have favourite times of year just as us parasites do, why not? Well, I can think of a hundred arguments against this, many of which are painfully intellectual, so I will dismiss them on those grounds alone. In which case I would guess that November is Winnipeg's favorite time of year, and Windsor's is June, Fredericton's is late August early September (I list these others to dispell any notion of seasonal bias - if I've biases they are of a different order).

... So this it, eh, three weeks before dull death sets in. Before dull death sets in me. And, it's going to happen too, just like this, like the changing seasons, it ends. And afterwards, after I'm dead, somebody might say, hey, do you remember that guy, just as I'll dumbly say in a few weeks, hey, you remember that autumn. But even now, before any of this, I'm sitting here frightened, afraid of the impending winter, afraid of dying, and, in spite of all I had said, I am not at all clear on why (I couldn't make a list, for instance).