before October ends
a love letter to fall in the city and not much more
foreword: I am bad at introductions and openings (although not necessarily forewords) — beginnings tend to stall my brain, and the gears crust over like honey jar lids with time. this is the reason, along with a longer slew of excuses like moving homes across state lines, I am only now relieving my mind of this fraction of rumblings as your parcel to shoulder. it’s with some regret that it took me so long — I have an armful of drafts for moments which have passed. maybe I’ll release those archives on rainy days. but today, before October ends, I would like to just begin without further disclaim. thanks for wading in with me. here we go…
At 57th, the doors open and sax notes float in. High, low, brassy and slow. A parting melody. October breezes through and back out. The doors close.
Don’t you just love New York in the fall? Here’s a line I never thought I could make my own — Meg Ryan said it first, and I’ll say it next. Don’t you just love it? My New York? The city where dreams are made yet everyone is awake? My New York!
It’s easy to romanticize a city that is too often romanticized. It’s also easy because I tend to romanticize anything. But this city is not really romantic, that’s not the word I would use. Alive, maybe. Kinetic. Arresting and lucid. Extraordinarily hard to feel indifferent about. Like when the plane lands at JFK, and the pilot crackles in relief, “welcome to New York,” I can scream in my head with complete honesty and the polar opposite of indifference… I’M HOME. How fucking cool.
New York in the fall, Meg Ryan says. Then something perfect about buying school supplies. Friends, I moved to New York in the fall.
If there’s one thing you should know about me it’s that I am utterly and unreasonably in love with this season. Since you all know me, I am only saying this for practice in prosaic confession — fall is so much to me it is almost a religion, spreads through each rib and through to my fingertips. (That was nice wasn’t it? I’m particularly proud of this line. And yet, what I feel is more.)
The air is like paper — good, thick, white as drywall paper. You give a flick and a thump and a nod, thinking, yes, that is paper. A slice and a dab and it pours through avenues like a great whisper. Whoosh. Leaves hear the call, burn molten, and shrivel above to swirl below like a starlet or dancer. And there, suddenly the city is red as a rooster. The horns still honk and the trash is out again and the puddles spattered about pavements are suspiciously yellow but god almighty, it’s fall!
The people are out in rosy wool coats and cocoa-warm scarves even though boys back in Texas would weather these days in shorts and a t-shirt without second thought. Apples decorate cafe chalkboards, chai is now a buzzword, and everything in the local Trader Joes has turned into a pumpkin.
But my favorite is when the city sets goose grey and gold. Fall flattens the sky with something like melancholy — it makes me want to hurry home, and at 7:34pm, that’s exactly what I’m doing. The globed street lights blink on, red brakes color the intersections, and the people, my love bugs, my little campaigners, have come out to crowd the crosswalks.
Look to the left, and there, the Empire State Building is beaming at me, so I beam back. I cross 18th on Irving, follow the smoke billowing from behind an orange traffic cone where the Chrysler spears out like a great solemn reed, and I breathe in and back out. The city has settled to navy, and the string lights from my Italian diner wink quietly, those small, wisened stars.
I cross Lexington on 22nd, steps wide but brisk, and nod at every yellow taxi that waits and hums and thrums as proof that I am existing in this city, that I live in this city, that I can call it my own, and every little bone and vertebrae in my body vibrates with a tinny but exhaustive thank you, thank you, thank you. I will never get over this.
The leaves outside my window are now egg-yolk yellow and swirl with my love to the streets below. Starlets, dancers, dreamers alike. Time passes like book pages in the wind, whoosh! It begins and there it goes, through to my fingertips. Friends, I moved to New York in the fall, and it has been so fucking cool.
phew! my first little delivery, sealed with too much adoration, and very much delivered. do not get tired of my city musings, I must say there is more to come. now, move here at once and do life with me please, thank you.
happy weenie eve and good night, dear void. love, karen.
"The city has settled to navy, and the string lights from my Italian diner wink quietly, those small, wisened stars." ❤️I can see it now! I cannot wait to join the campaigners of the streets VERY soon ;)
it's me, i'm Boys Back in Texas