It happens every year.
The leaves fall at regular rates to the beat of a regular wind. My BHCL (blood:hot chocolate level) runs steady at 9%. Flames gossip to one another inside my ancient, epic fireplace, cackling over jokes they never share with me, illuminating the room with their passionate discourse.
During this season, I go upstairs and open old photo albums. Nowadays that consists of clicking on a folder icon and tapping the right arrow key like a hair-trigger. Long forgotten eras come back to me, fossils from yesteryear that would have been lost forever save but by autumn’s annual excavation.
I remembered how I aspired to grow a beard five or so years ago, and how my BFF Andrew Nash poked fun at it:
The lyrics?
John Mark’s got the beard
Better’n Lance’s beard
(but we love ‘em dear)
gilp gilp gilp gilpa gilp gilp
gilp
Andy will hate me for posting that as it wasn’t produced in a studio or with Abelton Live. But hey, anything goes on impulsive pastime mondays.
I also came across a picture of my highschool friend Logan McNeil. This guy went from winning a modeling competition in like 2005 to escorting people on and offstage at the Academies:
So, of course, the best compliment I could pay him was this:
Man I look ripped.
Aaanyway, I got sentimental thinking through the games we played late into the night at places like Denny’s, trying to ride that thin line between entertaining our server and pissing her off:
I switched out my empty hot cocoa mug for a full cuppa the Earl (lemon, no milk, no sugar) and landed on a series of pictures I took with my dad’s SLR. This was before I had a working digital camera, so they’re the last film photos I ever took. They remind me of what’s psuedo-popular now. I took them down in San Diego, most of them near the beaches and piers in Del Mar or in Rancho Santa Fe.
I look at these California pictures alongside old images of my friends and I remember good times. It’s memory, not imagination, that first ignites a writer’s flame. Why do you think they schedule events like NaNoWriMo (whatever your opinion of them) in the fall? Autumn’s the season with memory, the time where life flashes before our eyes as the world dies around us:
And then, just like that, my computer died two days later. These were all that remained on my flash drive. Life flashes then dies in this memory season, this season when we are most alive.
