Invitation to Voyeurism

September is my favorite month. It's the farewell of Summer, the sad sighing au revoir of a few outdoor months well played. It's the last caress through my hair of a warm breeze headed south. It's the welcome of a few months of glorious disrobing, Nature's invitation to voyeurism. I always scramble to fit in the last few moments of sunshine, to inhale every last scent of a fading summer. September 30th is a sad day for me (aside from it being my sister's birthday, of course).

But then I step outside, and one look at the sky changes my mind: October is here. Autumn has arrived, and she is lovely. There isn't a blue much deeper than an October sky; I always feel I could look and look and still not see the end of it. The leaves crunch some, then there are those who stubbornly cling to the end. These are probably women. There is a feeling in the air, a sense of possibilities. The whole world is changing--might not my life change as well?

The spicy sweet aroma of an autumn apple. When I was a child, my uncle had gardens everywhere, complete with an apple orchard and a few raspberry and black berry bushes. When October came, the apple trees were heavy-laden with palm-sized red ripeness. The smell in the air is impossible to describe--how do you translate the essence of an apple? How can I tell you, how can I show you, what delight it was to bite into that new, warm, sun-ripened apple? My mouth opened wide in eager anticipation, teeth reveling in the satisfying crunch! of the ripe fruit, my lips suctioned to the slightly fuzzy skin of an unwashed apple, tongue waiting to lick every drop of juice from the fruit or off my hand. The most incredible part is that you can actually taste the sun. That apple's grown in the sunshine it's whole life and now the sun is made flesh--the white flesh of an orchard apple.

The blackberries--like little pieces of shadow that melted. Really--the sun filters through the blackberry bushes, and it's like the shadow pieces got too hot, so they bunched up and became berries. I'm not particularly fond of blackberries; on the list they're right above blueberries but that's all. So I can't really talk about what they tasted like--only what they looked like.

However, I love raspberries. Not store-bought, mind you. Only ones I've picked myself, half smashed and vine-ripe. I love how there's still a bit of dirt on them, how dust clings in the little curves of the berry. When you put them on your tongue, you don't get the tart part, not right away. First you smash the berry against the roof of your mouth, let the juice fill your mouth. I like to feel how full the berry was, feel like it was a mouth of someone, maybe, the way my own puckers around it, how my lips feel deliciously swollen and wicked. A lover's mouth? Full, ripe, tart, tasting like the earth, tasting like the sun? Would the mouth of my lover bring me as much delight as this, this hard-won tartness that lists a fraction of a minute?And it is hard-won: I usually walked away from the raspberries covered with scratches from the thorns. But worth it.

So too is the Autumn--it is a hard thing, to say goodbye to the summer. To bid farewell to all of those lazy afternoons drifting in the river. Sometimes it is too steep a price, to welcome in the thunderclouds, for then I lose those startlingly clear starlit nights, where deep calls to deep and the design of the stars matches the design of my soul. But then again, it too, is worth it. What would October be without sweatshirts and chilly fingers (and a cup of hot tea to warm them?), without pumpkins and soups and extra quilts laid on my bed? No, I love the change, hard as it is to part with the familiar.