Miscellaneous thoughts…
Well we writers are often asked were we get our ideas. So I thought I’d look around and see what caught my mind’s eye right now, and this just goes to show, EVERYthing is grist to the mill…
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It’s Fall again, but this year it kind of snuck up on me. I don’t know if it’s just that this summer has been really bizarre (we kind of had our October in late July and early August, to the point that there was a snarky widget floating around the Internet which said something like, “Searching for Pacific Northwest Summer/Error/Season Not Found”) or if I’ve been doing other things and had my head down and no time left to look for the first turning leaves – but hello, all of a sudden we have… autumn. The leaves which I failed to notice changing are starting to litter the back deck; today has been one long drawn out mess of wind and rain with no end in sight, the first windstorm event of the season has ALREADY knocked out power to parts of the neighbourhood that I live in, from 8AM yesterday to something like 1:30 AM this morning which is a substantial power outage – and we haven’t hit OCTOBER yet. It’s been a long cranky summer, and autumn promises to deliver more of the same.
And yet… I can’t help it. I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR. When the sun does come out it’s crisp and cool, and everything turns golden, and apples are out, and the sky is that perfect peculiar shade of autumn blue which doesn’t really happen at any other time of year because it simply doesn’t have the red-and-gold backdroup of the fall foliage to set itself up against and preen in its cerulean glory. People start complaining that the days are shorter – well, yeah, they start getting that way, and that means that the twilight comes earlier and the lights go on, and everything turns into a scene from some strange suburban fairy tale with the golden gleams coming from windows and outside house lights reflecting off damp driveways, and the quiet sense of things starting to feel drowsy, ready to close their eyes and dream their way through winter that is coming. I don’t mean I am particularly enamoured of Halloween decorations coming out in mid-September, but that isn’t AUTUMN, that is pure naked commerce, and I refuse to let it spoilt anything at all.
So. Even today, then. I’m sitting here looking out over a wild wood, swaying in the wind, with rain lashing into the trees. And it’s Fall. And I’m weirdly happy.
***
The other day I had to go to a gathering of local writers and give a talk on stuff – the State of The Industry and All LIke That. I don’t really get that much of a chance to play dress-up, so I dug out a pair of heels which I wear pretty rarely – not that I wear heels very often because they tend to make my feet hurt in both the long- and the short-term (I wore pretty high heels to a friend’s wedding just over a year ago – the friend in question is Jewish – if you’ve never danced the Hava Nagila in high heels I would advise that you don’t try – it took me a fortnight to get feeling back in my toes…). But these particular high heeled shoes were a special case. I remember that I bought them at a heavy sale for some RIDICULOUS price, they were (for whatever reason) being practically given away, but they’re Italian shoes, they’re really rather beautiful, and they are (more importantly) well-balanced, so that it doesn’t FEEL like I’m standing for hours with a pair of chopsticks stuck into my heels. And I wear them for special occasions, and so – well – out they came.
I discovered that something was wrong fairly quickly because I kept on getting caught on the carpet, like a cat with too-long claws. I’d take a step and either the heel would be caught so solidly that it almost pulled the shoe off my foot or else the carpet tried to follow my shoe as I lifted my foot off the ground. Upon examination, it turned out that there was a sort of small nail in the heel of the shoe and on both the shoes it had come out of the heel itself or the heel had worn sufficiently down for it to protrude to the point that it became a carpet hook. So, no problem, I packed up the shoes and I took them to a shore repair place to get the matter attended to.
The shoe repair person took one look and barked, “How OLD are those things?”
Reader, it would appear that I now own a pair of Obsolete Shoes. Because lo, the heels are not DONE that way any longer and have not been done that way for some time, and it would take something pretty special to fix the thing so that it would be wearable again. I would have thought it was a matter of pulling out the old nail, chainging the heel pad, and putting in a new nail to hold it so that it was flush with the heel surface – but what do I know, and apparently it is more complicated than that.
I don’t know how to feel about that, really. Those shoes are vintage 1980′s, it isn’t as though they had dragged their heels (heh) around since before the war. But if my shoes are that old, that obsolete, that throw-away-able, jeez louise, how old and throw-away-able am *I*? What happens when some nail in my own carcass comes loose and some doctor looks at me and barks, “How OLD is this body?”
That wasn’t the first time I had this brush with “mortality” – a decade or more ago a visiting young child who was being given a tour of my family’s home with his parents was introduced to my teddy bear, the one which had been given to me on my first birthday on which occasion he was bigger than ME. I still have him, threadbare and belowved, the old-fashioned kind fo bear with the articulated limbs and the solid sawdust fileld body and buttons for eyes, and the only place you can now see his original brave golden colour is on the remnants of fur behind his folded ears. In any event, the kid was told that the bear and I kind of shared a birthday, after a fashion – since his was counted from the day that he came to live with me. And that the bear would be turning thirty six years old on his next birthday.
The child turned round and horrified eyes on me and spluttered, “How… how old are YOU?”
I still have that bear, as it happens, and in a couple of years’ time it will be turning fifty years old. That’s a grand old age for an old teddy bear to reach. I may have to throw him a party.
He’s still here with me… but I suppose everything has its hour.
I’m gonna miss those obsolete old shoes. I am, really. It isn’t that I wore them all that often, but they were a pretty pair of dress shoes that I thought I could always count on, and now… well… they’re not there any more. Unless a miracle happens and I find some old-time cobbler who still has a supply of old-fashioned heel nails at hand to fix a pair of old and loved shoes which I am so very very loath to lose…
***
Hey, go take a gander at some of the Amazon reviews that have accreted to the “Midnight at Spanish Gardens” book here. Some more reviews are coming in soon (I know because the reviewers have been emailing me to tell me to keep an eye out for them) but those that are already on the Amazon site are from readers… and I’d love more… so if you are hankering for something new to read on your Kindle (or, well, visit Snashwords for other e-reader types – and the book is also available electronically through B&N) go pick up a copy and leave me word of what you thought. I’ll be here, waiting. And if you’re wondering what else I’ve been up to of late, check out the Alexander Triads (the first two – “Once upon a fairy tale” and “Cat tales” – are available both on Amazon and on Smashwords. They would LOVE a nice review from a friendly reader, too…
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Happy reading. Happy Fall. See you next month.
