late summer.

The sound of a distant highway, out-of-sight cars winding their way to sleepy destinations, the rhythm of an invisible train breaking through the silence of my morning walk to work. Brisk morning. Clear blue sky above, not even so much as a frozen cirrus cloud breaking up the azure. Sun rising above the tree line on my left, creating a bas-relief of shadow and glow. Frost-looking droplets of cold dew on rigid green blades of grass, fighting to stave off the drooping chill. And high above the geese, in their yearly formations, making a pattern for the south, responding to their nature. Every year I forget how magical autumn is, and every year I am pleasantly reminded.

Sometimes I think that I work in bizarro world. Part of my job is inventing work for other people to do. Making up projects, thinking of tasks to keep them occupied for a few hours. This, of course, can be involved, and usually takes a fair amount of my time to accomplish. How to make up work yet pretend that it’s meaningful, that it’s important? It seems so silly! I remember working in TESC’s conference services, and Laura, and Beckie, even Joel. The tasks they assigned me were (mostly) transparent and unnecessary, and I knew it, and I lost respect for them because of it. And here we are folks, here we are. How silly.

Tomorrow we will be a quarter of a century old. So will the sycamore trees in front of mom and dad’s house. The vernal equinox! Maybe I should get a job that’s mostly outside. And that is on the west coast. Near the ocean! A positively charged atmosphere, near water, near the sound of waves breaking.