Saturday Afternoon

I keep driving through a Postcard autumn. Not a glossy, Photoshopped splendor, but something quiet, faded.

It’s something you’d find at the bottom of that box of things to put in a scrapbook someday, a fifty-cent piece of paper from an old grocery store, or a photo taken from a generic instant camera. My brother always had one. I wonder where it went.

The greens hasten to a muted yellow, sparse on brown branches. The occasional red, mostly skipped, burns bright and noticeable, a man in a top hat wandering across a great echoing city square, alone.

I’m the Quentin Tarantino of Nostalgia–excessive to an artform (or at least that’s what I tell myself).

But don’t you feel something, too?

The fish fountain near the city steps burbled merrily, still flowing before the winter dry.

“The October green bean crunches with a melancholy snap, the echoes of the laughter of summer, forever gone.” I waved half of it around, trailing off.

My buddies raised a collective eyebrow. The farmer’s market closed.

But I drove home on a sunny Saturday, and noticed the iridescent edge around a cloud that didn’t belong in the clear blue, hoping it wasn’t smoke from my house.

It wasn’t, “only” further down the road. Or the near future. I can’t tell anymore. Best case is in a few weeks only half of us will be devastated. I don’t like those odds.

Saturn will rise this evening, and I’ll point the great eye towards it, inviting guests to step up for a look.

You’ll love it.

I’m listening, and wondering, and trying to tell the truth and live a good life, like Havel says.

The spaghetti is ready, with a crisp fall apple for dessert. And some thinking.

What a lovely faded fall.

–Josh

There’s a new comet in the sky. View of Comet 2023 A3 TA through a 12.5” reflector.