There’s no problem the wind and rain can’t solve, even the November wind and rain. The wind and rain can’t name the problem, can’t diagnose it, can’t prescribe, yet they can, shall we say, dissolve it.

Fall is slightly seedy, a tad disreputable. There’s that whiff of decay, of course, and the distinct and accurate sense that things are coming apart at the seams. Fall is a thrift-store velvet jacket, wine-stained purple, with your elbows showing through.

Finally, hunched over in supplication, I practically clawed at the next Docker-clad salesperson I saw and got the beautiful specificity of “aisle nine.” At that moment, no words in the English language were more splendid. Aisle nine. Possibly the world’s shortest, most perfect poem.

The world is always on the verge of being something else. Call it the temple/missile effect. I think the world’s drawn double, like an optical illusion.

More reliably than memory, writing holds the trace of who you were and are. Often this is talked about in terms of measuring the distance between the two.

It’s 90 fierce degrees outside, but summer is done. Labor Day arrives to wake us from the green dream.