There’s something weird about Autumn.

The wind in the trees...the smell of wet leaves..and some unaccountable feeling...some fizzing in the blood that I can’t quite describe.

I thought for a while that perhaps I was homesick, but this is a different sort of homesickness. I am home. Vancouver’s my home now, and I’m happy about that. The difference is the strange feeling that I am where I should be, despite the fact that what was home is no longer home.

Something about the dark in Vancouver suits me. Some people get depressed and miss the sun...not me. I know it’s up there, and that it’ll be back. But something about the dim light has seeped into memories of my childhood home. My sunlit memories are now grey-lit like the present, yet I can’t bring myself to regret the change.

Grey is the overriding metaphor of growing older. Absolutes fade, grow more similar, and blend into each other. But the infinite variety of greys is much more interesting than the polarity of youth. The odd bit of colour stands out much more strongly now that everything isn’t necessarily bright and shiny, and somehow this lack of contrast brings both memory and perception into sharper focus.

On one hand, Autumn is decay and death before the austerity of Winter, but it’s the dormancy and resiliency of the season I appreciate more than anything. It’s now that I really wake up.

Sometimes I set my alarm for the middle of the night so that I can wake up and know that I can get up, go outside and wander around in the dark and silent city...or just go back to sleep.

That’s what Autumn’s like...it has that surreal 4am clarity, but for a whole season.

It could be that I’m growing into my age...I feel like this is the age I was meant to be. Of course, it could also be that I shouldn’t stay home on rainy Sunday afternoons listening to Modest Mouse albums.