Grave Error

It is September and I am a little sad. Well, I am not quite sure how I would define this sadness. It could be melancoly or end of summer-beginning-of-fall-nostalgic reflection (which gives the impression of sadness) or a strange sense of sorrow. I have always had a special relationship with fall, and after an exceptionally warm weekend, today’s change in tempature made me feel the oncoming autumn, the most beautiful season in my home town. I also had close friends come visit for the weekend, and we had not all been together in seven years, each of us with our own personal lists of changes, moves, wrinkles, and losses. Nevertheless, we had also all lived in very close corners years ago and shared important joys and growing pains. The complicity was intact and we all enjoyed our reveries. Literally minutes prior to their arrival, I had finished a book I had been reading every evening for the past month. Religously, I would get home from work, open the book, and read for at least one hour or until it was bed time. But when my old friends all finally left and I finally had regained my free space, I had no idea what to do with myself. I looked around my apartment and tried to remember what it was exactly that I do, or at least what I had been doing here for the past months (or for the last seven years for that matter). I then realized that the problem was that I had finished my book, and would have to find a new one to read. There is a line of books on deck in my bookshelf, none in any special order. Once you start a book and get into it, it is becomes part of your life. The problem is starting all over again and knowing which book to choose, and then picking it up and starting life anew.