Inching Back to Normal

FRUSTRATION. Two weeks' worth of business travel have halted my forward motion on the 30x40 weight loss/exercise plan. Traffic/transit snarls Friday and today, plus the feeling of a cold coming on, wrecked my plan to see a back-to-back Godfather and Godfather Part II showing in the city. And the downside of fall — wet chill in the air and rain — draped the morning in gloom and further stymied my desire to get out and enjoy a Manhattan autumn Sunday.

I decided to sleep off the cold as much as I could. I'd been visiting the gym regularly since my return from River City, so skipping one day out of the past six wouldn't be a problem. Instead, I set the alarm clock for noon and curled back up beneath the covers. I heeded the clock's screech and ate breakfast, feeling less like I was getting a cold than actually getting over one: stiff joints and muscles, slow thoughts, and cabin fever. The day was still grim outside, which cut my desire to venture forth for a paper. Instead, I munched Grape Nuts and spent the rest of the noon hour doing chores I'd been catching up with since escaping from the black hole of business travel.

As always, things could be worse, even on the lonely, Sunday side of a three-day weekend. I'm just bitching. I did get to watch the Giants stomp the Seahags like roaches. The cold didn't feel much worse, and perhaps was just the side effect of leaving the windows open last night. Throat still feels a bit scratchy, though. On the social front, I've got the beginnings of a plan to see a friend of mine, with whom I recently reconnected after quite some time, some time later this month. And Jen and Steve will host the traditional Halloween party on the Saturday just after 10/31. No idea how I'll trump last year's award-winning costume, but I've got a few weeks to try.

So the goals for next week are (a) somehow dodge getting a full-blown cold, (b) resume my full-scale exercise and eating routine, and (c) enjoy as much of autumn as I can. I'd hate for the switchover this year to be straight from heat to dreary late-November rain.

Autumn Missing, Presumed Dead

THIS IS THE SECOND of two days on which the mornings have been swathed in dense fog. Driving to work yesterday was a bizarre experience for an October. Most un-autumnal.

I would expect those walls of mist to accompany me on a late-March commute. I've seen thick fogs arise from fields old snow along my commutes through the Meadowlands or past the golf course in Emerson. With just the right temperature and humidity, a thick layer of vapor enshrouds these low-lying areas. Seeing this, I would half-expect a mounted war party to emerge from it, armor damp and ringing in the morning air, piercing the fog and centuries of time to invade the present day.

In March I expect it. With snow on the ground I expect it. Not in early October. Not in the fall.

We had a fleeting week of true fall weather some time ago. Mornings braced the skin and nights brought cool relief from three awful months. Autumn has been usurped by waves of summer-temperature days, and with it the asinine spectacle of running the air conditioner in a two-digit month.

If I wanted 80º temperatures at sundown, I'd take advantage of the subprime meltdown and move to Las Vegas. As someone who likes the seasonal swirl of falling leaves and the double-whammy of cider and doughnuts fresh from the farmstand, however, my place is here, much as I love the Neon Havens.

Vexing to say the least. I expect a confused polar bear loping through town is next.

Baking Words and Banana Bread

I HAVE CELEBRATED THIS first day of autumn with baking and prose.

With the weather cool enough to make evening use of the oven possible without risking heat stroke, and two near-moldering bananas at hand, I broke out my copy of Bittman's How to Cook Everything and my baking gear for a mess of banana bread. The result is cooling (far too slowly, might I add) in the kitchen. I am surprised at how far the bread crowned up. It's nearly as tall as the pan in which it baked. I have butter and milk at hand for when it cools to the point where I can sample it.

It's really into fall and winter where I do a lot more cooking. With only one window wall, I have no cross-breeze, and so virtually all heat generated in here, stays here. I tend to celebrate Labor Day by making pasta sauce or chili in bulk. Once April rolls around, the party's over, and I have to mark the passing of decent weather by making extra supplies and packing the freezer full, sometimes resorting to my parents' freezer in the basement for auxiliary space.

I also joined Amy in starting a new 100 Words month. The entries will be listed under Schizohedron, but only after I complete a full 31 days. I'm hoping I can equal the other two months' worth I did back in (gasp) 2004, which brought a smile to my face when I reread them. I wasn't blogging back then, but it did get me to write every day, which is never bad.

Oh, I'm eating the banana bread now. Shaking some cinnamon into the mix was the smartest thing I did all day. This is quite lovely. Still hot enough to liquefy the butter, and richly fragrant. This will be a good week.

Traditional End of Summer

I CAN SMELL AUTUMN returning, wafting through my parking lot under a moonlit sky, the scent of smoke from a trattoria in town reminding me of the fireplaces that will glow with life in a short span of weeks.

I can see its return, crisp and maroon, in the piles of Japanese maple leaves accreting around my parking space, and in the orange tips of the trees that line the eastern edge of my company's property, trees catching the first flames of fall.

I can see the lights of upper Manhattan burning across the Hudson from Edgewater, unhindered by shimmering heat or noxious humidity. Birthplace of the Beats, you lie in plain view and soon will be wreathed in cool nights to go with your cool bop prosody.

I await you, autumn. I await rebirth into you.

Thirty-One Days and All Too Short

OCTOBER IS HERE. AUTUMN will flower into its most beautiful form during this month. I wish I had more days off in which to enjoy it, but I ran through more than I ordinarily would have this spring (due to the then-imminent ban on extended time off in the summer, which eventually was lifted). I could conceivably work a little later each day and build up a couple of half-day Fridays, but once again, rumor has it we may start our new way of production later this month.

Autumn is making itself known to me in many small ways. With the windows open at night, I find myself dropping off to sleep in the cool air far more swiftly than in the artificial chill of an overtaxed air conditioner. I have smelled wood burning, and in another form of fire, the edges of the leaves are curling and turning yellow and orange as though igniting at the touch of a hidden flame. We're a quarter of the way through football season, and the weather is just right for tailgating, whether you're at a stadium or not.

I have much to accomplish this month. Foremost among them is getting my sleep schedule into order. The better evening weather should help immeasurably. Soon, my old company 401(k) should be liquidated, and the check will be in my hands to drop into the retirement plan of my current employer. (October is historically a crummy month for stocks, so I decided to have the money be in transit while the market goes through its usual tenth-month flux.) Once it's in, I have to rebalance my entire spread of funds with the next several years in mind. I also want to make a regular date with this blog, to keep the writing muscles in tone in ways my job never does.

In general, I plan to reassess many of my priorities — physical, career, financial, creative, and recreational — in this wonderful, frost-edged month. I hope to celebrate some of these improvements at its end, coincident with Halloween, and if I can enact anything significant by then I will consider it a treat in the October 31 sense.

Wind Whispering Autumn in My Ear

OUTSIDE, IT'S WHAT MOST Labor Day planners would call a miserable day. Intermittent rain, driven by stiff wind from Tropical Fugue State Ernesto, with cool air and whited-out cloudy skies over all.

I couldn't be happier.

With each passing September day, the dead heat of summer heads further toward the horizon. I will be able to take long morning walks without dehydration and long evening walks without being a mosquito snack bar. I will be able to sleep deeply, with the windows open, and not piss away nearly $100/month blasting my Korean War–era air conditioner.

I feel some sympathy for those who had been planning cookouts, reunions, beach outings, or sun-drench drinkfests today. As a New Jersey resident, I am especially conscious of how a summer with ill weather can dent our state economy due to reduced beach patronage. And I do have to grant that August, of all months, actually offered up some comfortable and gorgeous days in its latter half.

We will be treated to more such days, however, as September unfolds. Between today's gloomy Hamlet of a day and the punishing humidity and heat we suffered earlier in August, the sweet spot lies. Were it not for this little quirk I have of needing to work for a steady income, I would curl up in that sweet spot every day from nippy morning through slanting sunset.

For now, however, I am taking advantage of the crummy day by shedding some paper clutter, transferring my poker records from Word to Excel, and otherwise maximizing the chance to be inside. I have the benefit of Monday's holiday to accomplish more outside-based chores when the weather is rumored to improve. I also avoided the temptations of crappy mall food and cooked myself a bowl of whole wheat penne with fresh broccoli, topped with ground pepper and a spoon of extra-virgin olive oil. With the potential for some boardgaming mayhem tonight — which is traditionally accompanied by some meat-topped pizza to get the killer instinct flowing — and a siege of Chinese food coming tomorrow, I want to notch a couple of decent, healthful meals while I have the chance. Eventually I will venture forth to the gym, which I will follow with a fruit/protein smoothie, another checkmark on the side of nutrition.

In all, I am taking this day at a lazy pace and enjoying not being on demand for job or heavy chores. The cool air and grey skies are, for me, a catalyst to all of this rather than a limit.

Cursed Corner of Chelsea

AHHHH . . . NOW THIS IS what fall is all about. I woke up yesterday morning to find an unfamiliar phenomenon streaming through my bedroom window. Investigating further, I was panicked to notice the sky had turned this bizarre shade of . . . could that be blue? Yes, the rains had receded, the clouds had thinned from forbidding armories of floodwaters to benign wisps, and new hope dawned in my battle against terminal mildew. I have been enjoying bracing winds and cool, dry air ever since.

The past week —10 days? Month? — of rain did claim one casualty that I know of. Close to my workplace is the Chelsea Market building, a converted Nabisco factory that also houses cable television studios. The main promenade holds a variety of bakeries, restaurants, and specialty shops. Here, unlike some other areas in the neighborhood, you will find tourist groups, enticed by a variety of tasty desserts and produce. It's also popular with the working stiffs in the offices above and in the buildings surrounding the area. So it gets constant foot traffic, which contributed to the wet floors therein this week.

I walked over to the Market to grab some end-of-the-week brain sugar when I encountered the unfortunate victim of these slippery conditions. A man was lying flat out on the floor, his shopping bags scattered about him, holding his lower right forearm and wincing. His friends and at least one Market security employee were gathered around him, diverting traffic to either side. This led me to believe that this had just happened, because he was lying perpendicular to the hallway.

I felt that queasy pang in my stomach that I always feel when I come across an injured party. I have been exceptionally lucky in that I have never broken a bone. My worst injury was a sprained ankle and strained ligament on my left pinky toe in 1988. I came down on the edge of my foot full force, and — had I struck it at even a slightly different angle or fallen with my arms in any different position — I could have snapped that ligament, and broken part of my foot or a wrist. As it was, I just toddled around for most of a week on crutches with an ACE bandage and a pronounced grimace. So when I see someone like this poor guy, I feel this odd empathy because I figure I have been unnaturally fortunate and, once again, avoided this sort of injury.

With his needs being attended, I kept walking — very carefully, so as not to necessitate another ambulance from St. Vincent's down the street — and thought back to a few months before, when I witnessed most of another mishap just outside the Market. That time, I was waiting to cross over to the Market's side of the street, not looking at the actual road, and I heard a jarring double bump. The second I couldn't identify, but the first sounded all too much like a car striking someone. I looked over to see a man flying away from the bumper of the car that had hit him, then roll and sprawl in the crosswalk. I deduced that the second bump I had heard was the man's cup of coffee flying out of his hand and hitting the car's windshield, which was bathed entirely in light sweet Starbucks.

People immediately rushed over to assist the guy, who, incredibly, was rising to his feet. They tried to convince him to let them carry him along, but he declined and began walking slowly to the opposite curb. I assume he still went to the hospital to get checked out for internal bleeding or whatever scuffs and bumps he sustained in the impact, but regardless, the Force was with him — the same hit could easily have broken multiple bones in a different, less lucky adult, or even flat-out killed a child. And again, I had that terrible sympathetic feeling in my gut . . . it could have been me in that crosswalk . . . and on top of that, the poor bastard lost his coffee!

If you want to dilate the definition of "corner" a touch, you can count the incident that occurred in my office earlier in the week as well. I was looking down the long axis of our roomy workspace while talking to a coworker, when I saw two paramedics wheeling a stretcher around the corner on the opposite side of the office. I then saw the certified CPR person tear ass down in the same direction. Something dire was up. The ambient noise in the place took on that hushed murmur that accompanies some sort of tragic incident — everyone wants to talk about it, but nobody wants to be heard asking for information — but still, a few folks headed down to check out the problem. I wanted to trip them. Nosy fuckers. If someone is in distress, the only people he or she wants to see are medics, not snoopy gossipmongers.

It turned out that one of the executives, who had suffered a heart attack some months earlier (which was news to me!), had felt ill, and an ambulance was summoned as a precaution. I didn't get the full scoop on what the follow-up was, not wanting to look ghoulish, so I don't know his current status. I did think to myself, how terrible it would be to die at work? Some folks have no choice, like military and peacetime uniformed personnel. But if I had a choice, the last place I would elect as the final stage for my life on earth would be my current workplace. How terribly lonely would that be, dropping helplessly into the infinite void, looking up at that same wretched ceiling, computer still bleeping at you to keep working, while all of your loved ones are minding their daily business at home or in other workplaces, far from your fading grasp?

So clearly it's not even safe inside my building. The only option seems to be telecommuting. At least I might be able to drag myself onto the couch here if I saw the Reaper through the peeper. In lieu of flowers, just arrange my houseplants decoratively about me. Short of all this, I will simply walk carefully and consciously in the city, especially in my cursed corner of Chelsea.

My Favorite Month Arrives to a Chorus of Sneezing

October begins today under blue skies and with gentle breezes wafting through my window. I have waited so long for its arrival. Fall begins in September, true, but you can still get 85º weather for that last week. With October, you know your odds of a cool morning walk to work, or a crisp afternoon adventure on a weekend, are greater.

I had planned to celebrate the arrival of October in this journal last night after work, but my allergies went absolutely crazy during the day. September in these here parts was unnaturally dry, bordering on drought conditions. The goldenrod that ordinarily would have bloomed earlier in the month was therefore held in abeyance. Only in the last 10 days or so have we had good, drenching rain that helped the fall vegetation finish its flowering cycle . . . and with it, the release of the sort of pollen that was supposed to have hit me mid-month.

I knew it was only a matter of time, but I've been sleeping with the windows open nonetheless to give my air conditioner — and my bank account — a rest. On Wednesday, I brought a new box of tissues to work because I was definitely sneezing more. At my worst, I have blown through a half box in a day. I figured I would get hit even harder at my current workplace this season, because — unlike the hermetically sealed office tower that was our former home in Midtown — this office dates from the 1930s, when windows were built to open. So I figured I would be awash in allergens.

D-Day turned out to be Thursday, and I had the unfortunate role as Normandy. I buttressed the beachhead with Claritin and nasal spray, but these defenses were quickly overwhelmed. Reserves in the form of a second Claritin in the evening bought me some time against the invaders, but as the evening wore on — even though I was hiding in a closed, air-conditioned basement for poker night — the inexorable advance of the goldenrod pollen broke through all resistance and established firm encampments across a wide front.

By Friday I was a mess. I had to go into work to get a my 1-day turnaround publication on press. Also, I had heard rumblings from my boss about too little work being assigned to too many people (of which more later), so I felt it was necessary to be present and accounted for. This was no easy task. I was a mess. I put some serious hurt on my tissue box, and I could barely go five minutes without blowing or sneezing or coughing. I have no respect for people who come to work ill because of some misplaced sense of duty (which results in all those around them getting sick and damaging schedules far more than just one person taking a sick day would have), but I assured folks it was just allergies, and that they were in no danger unless they got between me and my remaining Puffs Plus.

I finally bailed a half hour early. I was very tired by this point, having lost sleep the previous night to the allergies on top of an already later-than-usual bedtime due to poker night. I had tried to stay hydrated, what with the flow being constant, to put it delicately, but I just couldn't keep up and I was feeling groggy as a result. So I got my ass to the train station through the treasonously allergen-laden fall afternoon, and by 6:30 I was cranking the damned air conditioner up to blow in only filtered air as I curled up on the couch with pizza and antihistamines.

I woke up today at 10:30. Two days of fighting allergies full on knocked the shit out of me. I do need to get out there to perform various chores, and for the simple reason that it is gorgeous, but I am not looking forward to a third day of wrestling with a nose running like a garden hose all day. Needless to say, I skipped the gym for the past two days, so I feel weaker than usual, but a good hour there is part of today's plan. Early Saturday afternoons there are fairly depopulated, and what with two late nights in two days, I can stay up to about 11:00 tonight and enjoy the weather as this beautiful sky fades into twilight and sexy black.

All right. If I can breathe straight when I return, I'll offer up some more. If not, I will deliver an analytical review of exactly why my current allergic frenzy represents a lucrative opportunity to invest in paper companies that produce tissues. Retire early on my mucus.

Hail to You, Autumnal Equinox

Whether you want to call the season we just entered fall or autumn, all I care about is that summer — my least favorite three months of the year — has given way to fall — my most favorite. We passed the autumnal equinox this Thursday. I took some time at the Hoboken train station, at a sitting area outside, which affords a view from the remaining riverside factories of Chelsea to the new skyscrapers of Little Wall Street in the renascent Paulus Hook district of Jersey City, to watch summer's last hours unfold. I try to take 10 or 15 minutes to sit here each night, weather allowing, and watch the Hudson froth betwen the hundreds of abandoned dock pilings that break the water's surface near the outlook like mute memorials to a forgotten maritime age. Just a little stretch to inhale some fresh air and view the two skylines.

Soon, when Daylight Saving Time begins, these buildings will reflect gorgeous sunsets. The air from the harbor will be cooler and more refreshing, perhaps kicking up whitecaps across the Hudson as it did one day this week. And I may never even get to Hoboken on those nights until sundown, choosing instead to walk through New York City on late fall afternoons and early evenings, crunching fallen leaves along the byways of Greenwich Village, only returning to Jersey when the last rays of the falling sun have melted from the now-sleeping towers crowded along Wall Street.

If I owned a house and chose to give a cookout, it would be in October, high fall, when folks would be comfortable in my yard either catching up with one another's lives, tossing a football, or chasing kids through massive piles of leaves. Not summer, when my guests would be swilling equal parts water and beer to stay hydrated, and cowering in the basement of my house to avoid the pummeling assault of the sun. Not the spring, when my allergies would transform me from perfect host to textbook histamine reaction. And obviously not the winter (although it is my second favorite season, and the idea of barbecuing pounds of slow-cooked brisket and ribs over the course of Super Bowl morning and afternoon for a horde of frothing carnivores to devour during the game has great virtue). No, if I wanted to summon the troops, I would want them to assemble under canopies of orange and yellow leaves and a sky of flawless blue crystal.

Fall as a season of brilliant forest transformation may come early this year, because we received atypically little rain this summer. Early scouts, dropping from trees under cover of night or stiff wind, already have been paratrooping into my parking lot. I have passed curled, crisp maple leaves there, as though Canada had snuck in and left a deciduous calling card. I used to have a view from my desk at work of the southern end of the Jersey Palisades, from the tail of Fort Lee through West New York, and during the autumns I sat there, I watched the cliffs, and the massed trees receding miles into Essex and Passaic County beyond them, burst aflame as if in revolution. The urge to play hooky at these times was difficult to resist. I curse myself for not succumbing.

If I had to choose a season in which to begin a new relationship, it would undoubtedly be fall. In one of his books, Henry Rollins praised the unique way the sun illuminates a woman's face in the fall, so the concept has pierced even his scarred heart. In fall, miniskirts give way to sweaters and boots, making the New York streets a delight. Ideally we might meet in early September, just before fall, so by the time the true turn in temperature had come, we could plan long walks along the Hudson; go on trips for donuts and cider; drive miles along forested highways to watch the spirit of the season burn in the leaves; brainstorm on idle, cool afternoons for Halloween costume ideas; and sleep in each others' arms with the windows wide open, finally needing no air conditioner, just the welcoming caress of autumn night guiding us to carry our affection into our dreams. And with some felicitous grace, I might awaken in the depths of night, to see her face glowing in the moonlight like a Forties film goddess.

That is a movie in which I would star without hesitation.