Autumn Uneasiness

Autumn has hit us on the coast like a boot in the solar plexus.  Between the sweltering afternoons and peasoup morning fog, its abundantly clear that summer is dead.  I am rather glad summer of '10 is over.  The school calendar robbed us of two weeks of freedom and the sun hardly even made an appearance.  Tho' I will miss the lazy mornings with LuLu.

The transition from summer to fall has always been the hardest to make.  From the vague scratchiness in my throat, perpetually swollen glands and the dank spectre of the flu, its the time of year when good health seems the most precarious.  It makes me wish I had a traditional Chinese doctor I could call.  I can't imagine calling up my GP and saying, hey, I feel that drop in temperature, that autumn malaise coming on , what should I do?  I want a liver tonic.  I want to eat strange fungis whose names I can't pronounce.  I want to prepare elaborate broths that will simmer for days and nights, filling the air with exotic smells.  I want to crawl into a dark warm place to hibernate.  I want to sit in a sauna.  I want to start ambitious felting projects, I want to over-winter in Berlin, I want to see the aurora borealis.  I want to take a trip on the Trans-Siberian railroad.  I want to take a short fast, I want to live in my own yurt and drink yak butter tea, I want to dig up roots and eat them, I want to bundle up the LuLu and take her a hilltop where we can fall asleep under the stars, I want it to be so dark and quiet that we can hear the planets move, I want to learn to appreciate home prepared snails in the south of France, I want moule.  I want moule in garlic and wine sauce. I want to sip hot Fernet while I get my feet rubbed.