It feels like winter, but it should be spring.

There is something inspirational to the soul about enjoying something that's always there. Living in New England for most of my life I all but ignore the "color". The trees change their clothes, drop trou, and the winter comes. Driving tonight, I learned to enjoy it again.

The Magnetic Fields album "69 Love Songs, Volume 2" was on the 'pod. I was wearing my old Old Navy jacket and just taking in the night, driving much slower than normal. Not a single other car was on the road, and for once I could cruise at a relaxing 35 in a 40, enjoying to often somber sounds of the band. Love is all they sing about on that album, obviously, putting me into that romantic mood I sometimes let peek out. Then I heard something sounding like static. Then I heard more of it. I checked the radio to see if the ipod dock was getting a bad signal, but nothing. Then it hit me.

I was driving over leaves. Hundreds of dried up leaves. They were coming down like snow.

Suddenly the air hit me, cool and moist. Getting home didn't matter much at all anymore. I just wanted to drive and see these amazing things falling from the trees. All I could think of was being a kid again and jumping in leaf piles, and the little bits of broken leaves that would stick to your socks. Twigs in my hair, leaves on my socks. A kids as close to an adult as a bush. Something innocent came back into my life, and I really don't want to lose it, but I know I will. I know that I'll wake up tomorrow and be the same person I was this morning. I know that I won't be able to share this with anyone, not the experience at least. There is something perfect in the complete privacy of the moment, but the knowledge that other know it too. It's like this shared unconsciousness that we all have, at least the ones that grew up in this region, where the air would go cold before school started and the balmy 60 degrees of the spring seemed like 90.

There is this shame that I feel in moments like this. It's that knowledge that years ago I could dwell on nights like these for weeks, revelling in the wonder of it. Now I cannot. Even if I try to, I'm faking it. I'm forcing sincerity. These moments are like water on a duck's back, and while I try and hold on, they just slip away. If I could meet me now I don't think I would like me much. I'd have a much better time of things, but I think that cynical little tumor in my life grew into something bigger, and that there's no way to remove it or even tone it down. Maybe it's growing up. Maybe that innocence being lost is a shared experience, like broken leaves, one that we all have but never talk about. I hope so. I don't want to be the only one that's broken their own heart.

Until the next time we speak, until I figure things out and feel like talking more, until something happens that is of note,

-Chris