September Eve

5:43 a.m. The woods are quiet, and it looks pitch dark out the window at first glance. You have to look up to see a hint of light. Not so long ago the sun was up and the air full of birdsong at this hour.

In six months a 50-degree morning will herald spring morning; now it’s a promise of autumn chill. Life’s circles are baffling that way.

It is a season of cooling, although we surely have not lost summer yet. They say the high will be in the mid-seventies for the next three days, and there’s no real need to touch the jackets and coats that hang in the closet. I haven’t heard any geese honking toward the south or anything like that.

Still, the signs are there. The autumn equinox is less than a month away, and the sunrise has crept more than an hour later than it was two months ago. The other day we saw a tree with a splash of orange where it had once burst with lush green.

The end of August brings a dull heartache. The flaming beauty of fall will be here in a month or so, and in the meantime we have plenty of summer left to enjoy, but July and August are past.

We’re about to enter the time of fading and dying and cold and dark. Just as sure as dawn follows the dark of night, life will return and the green surrounding us now will follow what’s about to come. We will cling to the warm memories until they are reality again.

The Time of Magic nears

They lined up next to my chair almost exactly as they had last summer, my two golden girls, and once again they presented me with a perfect portrait. Was this God’s way of reminding me to do a little shameless self-promotion?

Last fall, partly as a way to keep me from engaging myself in the toxic presidential campaign, I began writing a chapter-a-day story that opens with Dejah and Summer suddenly gaining voices. It became a fantasy about interdimensional portals, magical beings both good and evil, and of course an existential threat to our world. (Existential threats were in fashion last fall, after all.)

The result was this charming short novel, Dejah & Summer in the Time of Magic, which I have subtitled “A Halloween Fantasy” because, well, it’s a fantasy about the Halloween season. Sometimes my creativity is astonishing, don’t you think?

Most people don’t give gifts at Halloween, but if you are so inclined, this would be a perfect Halloween gift for your favorite reading loved one. Just sayin’.

Or was the perfect portrait God’s way of saying it’s time to write a sequel?

Enough with the fighting

The F-word was in the front-page headline again Thursday, as an elected official pledged to fight. It wasn’t even something anyone would fight about — she wanted to fight over having more manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin. Talk about shadow boxing.

I for one am weary of politicians who promise to fight. Most humans want the same thing — a measure of safety and comfort, food and shelter, privacy and freedom, a helping hand to and from neighbors when it’s needed, and to raise their kids in the ways they should go.

Politicians like to pretend we need to fight about it and that it all would be much easier if we’d just vote them into office or vote to keep them there. But government is a blunt-force instrument that gets in the way most of the time. If it’s not seizing the fruits of people’s labor to fight for wasteful, inefficient programs that do the work we could do better on our own, then it’s sending our children overseas to die in someone else’s fight.

I lost a good friend earlier this year who never voted and lived a good life. His philosophy was more or less that it’s not wise to vote for politicians because it only encourages them, and there are few things in life more dangerous than an encouraged politician.

My own epiphany came when I was framing a newspaper column on the theme that our well-being does not depend on our choosing the right ruler. I suddenly realized that oh yes, it does: My well-being depends on my recognizing that I am the boss of me and that I’d better rule my own business as best as I can.

There’s a pivotal moment in the movie Serenity — which concludes the mighty TV saga Firefly — when hero Malcolm Reynolds squares off against a nameless government operative.

“I have to hope you understand, you can’t beat us,” the operative says.

“I got no need to beat you, I just want to go my way,” Reynolds replies.

There’s no need to fight. This world is big enough for all of us to go our way. Let’s just try to be good neighbors.