autumnal vertiginy

The leaflet "how to protect your dog from trapezoids and other parasites" was released by a high altitude plane over Toronto during one of the most abysmal times: an all out, no sense but the best nonsense, culture war. Okay, if you want to call it a way, you can. I'd rather call it a kind of prolonged accident, the one with wings and a stellar burning vapor associated with it, you know, that kind of vapor you smell just as fall is beginning and people are starting to burn wood to keep warm. And it's been maybe not the best weather and you're considering moving to Florida or San Frangalis just to keep a nice winter home far away from the chill. The weather leaves a dry, almost alcoholic tang in your mouth, and all kinds of ridiculous sports games are on the television. The air smells dry and its been a while since the last precipitation that you can remember. A thin veil of winter air descends and the fireside alien is roasting marshmallows happily while you struggle to keep up with the ever increasing, ever incessant demands of your time made by shadows and substrates, made by ghosts and wraiths, all representing the gone world. Maple cider and whatnot, the chance of the changing of the seasons. The withering of leaves, the dessication and dust conversion of little scraps of formerly and recently photosynthetic tissue, an ore of carbon made from air, water, and light. It's a few billion years after the first filamentous masses of cyanobacteria began emitting toxic oxygen. And the thin sunset peaks of the moon and the thin fibers of the sun intersect in their rabidly obscurescent dance of the seasons, with that magic in the air and that feeling of degenerating leaves and maybe some itinerant hope hiding under the sea charred air, the coming of one of many transitional magics, only a few of which are known well, and fewer still that are practiced appropriately. The set sun says the sky is dark and frosty, and the air says nothing save the whooshing noises it makes as it sways and waves.