9.24.99

I can't think of any unique way to indicate the arrival of fall. All I know is that the air reminds me of Halloween. Orange is constantly on the brain: pumpkins, leaf chips under foot, harvest moon. It feels comfortable. Early darkness hiding my walk from view. World shrinking. I am reminded of last year's fall...last fall my memory tells me I felt good...but I'm not so sure. The journal whines of coldness. But I do like fall in general. Feels like beginning despite the ending. And today while walking in the early night, I welcomed winter darkness and the exaggerated safety of indoors. I attended the tea ceremony. Can I be too obvious with appropriate imagery? It drank me in, ladled and stirred me so I thought the boundaries of my body had been liquefied and my soul might twist away toward heaven. Enlightenment was the certainty I will have to return to Asia to study these rituals, really learn them. Learning what I do not wish to know: that I am here and not there and not of there (and not really wishing to become there) but ugly in narcissism. I must be unique...but the resident sage, Joan, told me that's not so; she said: You know what this is. Now late, later than late, and the wind has gripped the city. Things I cannot see in the darkness are clanking and thumping by. Yet the full moon's light black charges everything white and the wicker chair glows neon under an incandescent strip of window sill. Torrents of cloud burning in the blackness rolling rolling. I called Mrs. Chung to wish her family a Happy Chusok. She answered the phone with a long, slightly annoyed and trailing, "Nae...?" "Hello?" "Hello?" "This is Helen..." "Helen? Aie! Whe…where are you?" "Seattle. I called to wish you and your family a Happy Chusok." "Chusok was yesterday," her voice deep, slowed, maternal. Defensively: "It's still yesterday here." "I know," she giggled.

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