Fall is in the air

Fall is in the air today. The leaves on the Maple trees at the bottom of my road have begun to change and that's always the signal for me. When I was growing up, there was one particular Maple tree on the corner of Beaconsfield Boulevard and Woodland Avenue that always went first, usually at the end of August, just before school started. It went the most incredible colours but it was the portent of the end of summer and so it was tinged with melancholy, for me anyway. I recognize that school had lost it's wonder by then, which was shame, because learning is so much fun for me. I saw a school on television the other night that was old and vine-covered. It had a grand entrance hall and huge, curved, wooden banisters - the kind you can slide down. I always wished I could go to a school like that. I'm thinking about my high school in particular. I suppose that it was considered avant-guard in its day. It had a lot of exposed concrete and no embellishment. There was a 'lounge' next to the lobby that we used to call the 'Fish Bowl' because it was glass on three sides. There were built-in benches around the sides of the room that were covered in the carpet that came up from the floor. But to have a lounge for students at all was the height of change. It was very sixty seventies. The building, which I always thought looked like a penitentiary, had that typical flat facade of the late fifties and early sixties. There was a proper theatre with theatre-style seats and back-stage changing rooms. I'm not sure that was usual for the times. By the time I got there though, it was old hat and we didn't appreciate what we had. To me, the whole thing was sterile. Maybe I was born in the wrong era!

But I digress. Today is a lovely, gentle fall day. The sun is weak and the wind only just stirs the leaves. It smells of leaves beginning to dry up and fall off, but not enough to rake. The air is fresher, crisper. And no one knows which season to dress for. T-shirts walk beside sweaters and jackets, sandals beside ankle boots. I was back into my red boots the other day without being too warm. Last night I made my first stew of the season. It seemed like a cosy thing to cook in my cast iron pot. It went down very nicely. Ruth sent me another email of channeled information about the impending changes to our world and the help that is being promised by our off-earth friends. I read it all and followed the links to watch the videos on-line. All the predictions are saying that on or around October 14th, they will show their most enormous ships in the Earth's atmosphere in a way that cannot be refuted. They also say that they will be so big, and have so much protection, that no one will be able to attack them either. All of this is in order to show that they come in peace. I believe it can happen. Hell, I think I've been channeling them! I'm always wary of dates and times though because, as they keep telling me, time isn't the same for them as it is for us. I will have to wait and see. There's a hell of a lot of information out there on the Internet about all of this. It used to be that no one knew what I was talking about and it was hard to even find a book about it that wasn't flaky. Now there is so much that I can actually see whether the messages are similar. Given what's happening to us with our impending elections, I think we could do with some benevolent, non-interfering help. I'm not willing to give up making choices for myself, or taking responsibility for those choices, but enough is enough. This US bail-out of Wall Street is ridiculous. On that happy note, I shall push off for coffee now. Anon, fair friends!