Fall is in the air...

There is something about the smell of fall. I am not sure what it is. The air becomes crisp and yet some how thicker, but not in a bad way. Not in a humid summer way. This thickness lets it hold smells. The smell of oak, hickory nuts that cracked when they hit the drive way, smoke from somewhere, and for some reason the smells coming from your neighbors kitchens all seem to linger. It makes me think of camping, walks in the twilight, thinking hard but with hope, Harry Potter, Halloween, family, and most of all the feeling that things are simply going to get that kinda cozy sensation. I think that this is a thing peculiar to not-so-densely populated areas. It may just be that you need lots of oak trees (as this is the back ground). I don't know, it seems something distinctly southern... I guess I can't explain it anymore than that.
I have been thinking about "The South." I suppose it was the Republican Convention, the change in the weather, and that Sarah Pallin woman's constant pandering to an idea of a kind of person. I don't know. It is an area of the country that has had a rough time. It is an area that seems unable, or unwilling, to to escape from its past. We are area that relishes in our short-comings and disasters. We refuse to let go of our "Dixie Heritage." We love to make fun of those places that make fun of us and have a median income twice what is ours. And in our own way, Reconstruction never ended. We are constantly re-building. We are never building anew. We feast upon nostalgia, myth, and a skewed sense of our history. Our love of living in flood-plains, low-lying costal areas, and in the middle of tornado alley bely not only over love of pain but our ironic font of grit and character. Faulkner could never have written in Ohio. The blues would not have come to be in San Fernando valley. And by golly Jazz would never have come about in anyplace but New Orleans. It is a place I love and a place that drags me down. It is my sun and my kryptonite. I love it here but let us hope that it does not kill me.


That being said, the food is pretty good.