Turn back the clocks

The cold, dark, earthy, foggy, looming, shortening evenings of early October, I honestly can’t think of a better way to plan my next well-meant mishap or impending bad decision than in these special hours of half-light and full grumpiness. This is the start of the impending preparation for hibernation that is a Canadian Winter.

My back is turned to the dying log fire, lights off to try and enjoy the last rays of clouded sun while I’m sitting on my old baize green, worn but well-loved couch, cup of tea in hand, TV set to mute with no understanding or logic to why it’s on at all. I’m staring out with ill-ease and best intentions, towards the growing mass of unraked leaves on the cut but still semi-parched lawn, enticing me to come make piles and back ache. Not tonight lawn, sorry, I have a headache, you go talk to Shrub and Tree for a bit, find out if Stone is still angry with Fence over the chipmunk incident.  Joggers and Cyclists pass on the road outside my gate, reminding me of my own impending death from sloth and bacon-wrapped scallops.  Runners pass the joggers vacuum-packed in Lululemon, probably making them think the same.  The fires warmth is only stretching across to the coffee table and abruptly stopping as if it’s too scared to try and even attempt a re-invigoration of my day-on-my-ass-weary bones in case of an elemental retaliation it yet hasn’t been introduced to.  Water and I , it seems to say, we make some good steam, that I can handle. At least there’s some product of our conflict, but this thing in the ass-torn pajama bottom’s, pizza sauce stained black Chuck Norris T-shirt and the look of a warthog that just sat in a thorn bush? It might do something I will seriously regret. It’s probably best to stay away, lithely hang around the other side of the coffee table and smoke. The coffee table seems happy enough with its contract and perfectly fine with its purpose, deciding not to move to mediate the “elephant in the room” caused by the growing animosity between the ass-torn pajama bottomed warthog and the fire that’s just cremated Uncle Fred. I wish we could just make up, says the warthog, I need a cuddle.

Where oh where oh where did the Summer go, with its UV 11 sunburns and allergy ridden fields of Goldenrod.  Its lazy hazy ,sneezy days of Ibuprofen and hot sweaty nights of anti-histamine. Its fishhook-riddled fingers and grass-skinned knees. It really only seems like yesterday it was Spring. Spring what an awesome word to describe it.  Outside of Fall I can’t think of a word that describes a season so well.  Growing up using the term Autumn instead of Fall was in some retrospect, quite strange.  What happens in autumn, Things Fall? If Spring gets to call itself Spring then why is there such a big deal about Autumn calling itself Fall in the rest of the world outside of North America? It makes complete and utter sense and obsoletes the more archaic and medieval sounding Autumn.  With its brooding feeling of omnipresent death akin to a good old witch burning or plague cleansing.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a period drama that has a burning at the stake set with a background of flowers and babbling brooks.  Autumn should be given at least a mention in the credits , let alone best supporting actor.

Spring though, what a season.  The main stage band after the swan song of Winter. The slayer of Jack Frost who just didn’t nip at your nose, but tried to rip it off with a rusty pair of pliers.  Bye the bye Mr. Frost, see you doth soonly oh you with faeces for a mind, may you die screaming from the wounds of a

hundred knives.  Yeah, you were great around Christmas blanketing the earth with such an illustrious covering of pure porcelain white, allowing coloured lights and stars from the thousands of plastic houses and condos to be turned into a magical fairy land of wonder and over-marketing.  Children frolicking in your bed of snow until the wet and cold made them go screaming home to their Moms.  But like a South American Dictator, you stayed too long didn’t you?  Decided it was your way or the high way didn’t you? You thought there was no one out there that could ever overthrow you, didnt you? However, you were wrong , weren’t you?

Yes, Mother Nature once again rose her sleepy dandruff-filled head, put on her best afghan sweater, boiled a up a big batch of chamomile , dropped her book on Wiccan lovemaking techniques and booted you up the ass back to the loneliest chasms of the polar ice-caps. There you will stay my icy friend, until they melt or the world doth end. She’s back in town and taking names, has signed herself up on lavalife, e-harmony and facebook and has only semi-lied about her weight. It was a long sleep for God’s sake, it’ll drop off in a week.  Her time has come, her work is that of reproduction and she’s more aroused than Arnold Schwarzeneggers nanny.  She walks around like an African Queen Bee birthing colour and life onto the landscape, wielding her womb like the cursor of a Farmville addict.  Within weeks she has replaced the empty whiteboard of Winter with the most brilliance of perfect beauty, and every year it feels and smells more fresh and radiant than the one before. No painter, poet, writer or singer can ever capture the true awe of a spring morning in Southern Ontario.

However, its October, can we turn back the clocks? Not that stupid hour for the farmers thing that means we lose more of our time to the luminescent glow of our computer monitors , our cash drawers , and our wet windshields. I remember in my youth loving end of September to October, it was the opposite, a time of rebirth, a  new school year, new college year, new jobs always seemed to start around then, it was a time of mental refreshment.  I’m not feeling it now, feeling very stagnant, like the dead leaves on the ground.  Maybe this tea will help, or that volunteer work in Darfur everybody’s been going on about???