Vais

More about fall.

This is, for me, the most evocative time of year. It sends me so easily into other times and places, some of them the ones where I felt I fit best, even if only for a moment or two.

I get on my bike and I ride without much idea of where I'm going - and it hardly matters, since where I'm really going is into my imagination, and the pedaling is just the means of getting there.

I think of leaves, and apples, and the smell of hay, and fires lit outdoors, and people singing. It sounds like something out of a movie, but it really was my life at times. I don't know why I've never been able to bring it back, but I haven't. And so I think about taking a long - a very long - bicycle tour, and living in a tent for a while, and seeing different land and skies every day.

It would be best to do that with a companion - preferably one who's a better bicycle mechanic than I am. But I also think I should take some classes, so that I don't have to wait forever to take this trip.

It occurred to me the other day that I do a lot of things by myself simply because I don't want to spend my whole life on the threshold. I think sometimes that's the reason people get married - because they feel they need permission. They feel they need a partner to buy a piece of land, and to put holes in the walls of a house. They need a partner to feel they can exist, that they have a right to make roots in the soil.

I don't know if I'm capable of roots. I've never quite felt I belonged anywhere, or to anyone. I was barely able to accept the responsibility of adopting a cat, and I sometimes worry about her. What do I do when I want to leave, on the bicycle, loaded down with food and shelter and nothing very much else?

I know that Boywich would look after her for me if I asked him to. He lives far away. It would be a big logistical nightmare.

I sometimes wish she were a dog. A dog could happily come with me. Wow, twice I tried to write "dog" and it came out "god." Twice. A god could happily come with me.

Interesting.