I Wish in October (6)

6

I was in my late twenties. I remember the park that I worked near, which was not the same park as the pondless plastic bag park, was very beautiful in the October time of year and at any time. I remember sitting in the park and reading as much as I could of The October Country before every unrelated wearying thought in my head successfully pulled me out of concentration and had me in a theatrical display of listlessness gazing at an empty bin, breathing quite shallowly and trying very hard to cry. I had not been able to cry, and had read three full pages, and I had gone back to the office early; I returned not for the destination, for I could be listless too at my desk, but instead for the interim travel: creation of endpoint and getting there. Perceptible endpoint, such as being back at the office by two thirty, and the threat of being in ‘trouble’ if I was not, very much as at school, was one of the rare circumstances in which I could spark the bother to move.

Autumn brought with it Halloween, which fed then to Bonfire Night, and the evening light got darker till the streetlights would be on before I began the journey home, and at the focal point of the year I would invariably get too drunk, at the work Christmas party, and slide down over the following weeks into moods of deep demotivation. I could not occupy my thoughts throughout a day with anything other than feeling demotivated, and being very angry with myself for feeling that way, and feeling that I lived inside of a wooden box that people pulled around occasionally or nudged, but which for the most part sat wherever it sat because I was unable to either move it myself or to climb out of it.

So the twenties Halloweens could not be redirected from their deformation into sallow reflection on the disappointments and perceived losses of Halloween past, and entertainment of the copious possible futures in which I would continue to disappointment myself, at Halloween, and at every other holiday, and every weekend, and every granite day in between. I had, growing, continued to make promises. I could not stop it. To me, I had promised now worlds of loving, and relationship, and of feeling very close to someone. I knew no more of this than what it felt like to be in the presence of a phantom or an angel, or to witness spells, the miraculous, tyrannosaurs, a contented mind.

I would still insert myself into the season; commutes correct only with Dead Man’s Bones and Rocky Horror. In demonstration of emotion’s ability to wrap itself truly around anything, Dinosaur Jr. are now, also, tied without possibility of extrication to the colours of park autumn, and its cold, and a great sweeping lowness that came in part because of the season, and in part because each year I would remind myself of the year previous, till there was nothing but a loose coil retracting all the way back to childhood and its dreams, and the grand unrealised.