Little love note

This piece of paper, pulled from a notebook, had only one word on it: love. There was also the faint outline of a dusty sneaker print. I left it where it was, on 35th Avenue near Steinway, but I can pass it on here nonetheless.

A chill in the air

Fall: no better time in the world, especially in New York. The leaves are all manner of gorgeous, culture kicks into high gear, and everything is liberally spiked with pumpkin essence -- lattes, bread, ice cream. Big bouquets of dried flowers (see above) are only fifteen dollars at the Union Square Greenmarket; snuggling up with a mug of hot cocoa and a book is an acceptable way to spend one's Friday night; and the whole season culminates in Thanksgiving, a gastronome's delight, where your biggest worry is whether the bird, six colorful sides, two pies, and a case of wine will carry you through the night.

Or at least that's how it should be. This year has been a strange one, and November has proved no exception. Everything seems extremely urgent and yet as fleeting as a fog that rolls in before dawn and dissipates by 10 a.m. I may be in the home stretch of National Novel Writing Month (just 10,000 words to go), but there are a lot of other balls still in the air. I'll let this photo of my cat's mournful cry express my agita:

Pumpkin-palooza

I love, love, love fall. And the wonderful people that surround me. And pumpkins, and candles, and hard cider, and Astoria, and ... yeah. I'm happy.

It's decorative gourd season

From a 2009 McSweeney's piece by Colin Nissan:

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

Oddly, it seems I've reached a point in my life where this is no longer a hilarious send-up of middle-class American proclivities, but rather an eerily accurate reading of my thought process last weekend.