October Light

Each autumn - as regular as clockwork and for absolutely no discernible reason - I get heavy hearted and sad.  I know it has to do with the quality of the October light on these late fall afternoons, there's something in it that seems to pull me under like a wave.  I can already feel it coming on and it's only three quarters through September.

Nothing is wrong or worse or out of sync.  Nothing is out of place or threatened or dying.  Nothing is missing or lost.  Nothing is altered or gone but the light feels different.  I feel shadows and dark corners, a very real sense of loss although for what, I have no idea.  Nothing I've found lightens it, shortens it or pushes it away. The sadness, the melancholy feeling, is overwhelming but insubstantial, as if I'm suddenly seeing everything through a veil.  I want to cry all the time.  It makes me a little crazy, mainly because it seems so mysterious, I suppose.  Because I can't explain it away, can't rationalize it or put it in its proper place.  It's a dark feeling, like standing on the edge and being too afraid to jump but too afraid to step back.  There's no bright side except that I know it will pass.

It's the quality of the light, no longer the summery brightness of July, not yet the grim gray of November, but some un-named month in some forgotten place where the late afternoon sky turns a stormy yellowish and all the leaves are fallen.  It's dead warm for this time of year and often there's a smoky scent in the air.  The very stillness is alive.  It feels over with.  It feels unknown.

It's just autumn, I tell myself, just a small window of time where the light is not what it should be, not what it's meant to be, not what it was or will be.

It can't pass too soon for me.