2003-10-20 11:54 p.m.
"What a Fool Am I..."

I fall in love a thousand times a day. Yesterday, I fell in love with the yellow tree that grows behind the steeple of the church that is across the highway from my job. I can see it so well from the stack of old newspapers that is my smoking spot; its leaves such a contrast against the dead brown backdrop that makes up the rest of its mountain home that they almost look like wax from where I sit. Like somebody molded them. Or painted them into the world, taking care to make them so bright that they look as though they don't belong. But they do. And that is the most beautiful thing about them.

Last Wednesday, I fell in love with pumpkins. I do every year. My Steve and I went to our favorite pumpkin picking place (the same one we go to every year, an hour away) and went skipping out into the great open field and the wind tossed us about and I kept getting my hair in my mouth and his pumpkin blew off the cart and we had to chase it down a hill and I chose the same shape I choose every year: a short, fat, round one, on which I will carve the same face I carve every year: a happy, toothy, smily one. And I never tire of this.

I never tire of this; this life, this falling in love every day, even though I may be the "first pancake", and my book may never get written, and I may never become more than a convenience store clerk or a mediocre freelance photographer, and my wounds may never heal completely, and my nightmares may continue to dog my steps forevermore. Nobody's clipping this bird's wings.

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