The Lengthening Shadows

I suppose it's inconsiderate of me to disappear for a few weeks and then return with a pro forma political diatribe that offers not a word of explanation as to where I've been or why I seem to have deserted the world of electronic letters.

Yes, well, I have no explanation apart from alienation or sheer laziness or a crisis of the spirit or, erm, sheer laziness. Every day I think all sorts of thoughts, often taking the trouble to craft them into eloquent or at least elegant sentences that cause me to think, "Now that would be an excellent topic for a blog post," only to reflect further that, "Oh, but it's late, I'm tired, I have to get up early in the morning, and besides, what do I have to say that hasn't already been said and won't get me laughed at?"

Unfortunately, the answers that the cosmos (aka the space between my ears) most frequently hurls back at me are "Yes" and "Nothing." So then I stomp around in an inarticulate snit, perhaps run a few laps around the track in McCarren Park (I'm up to three miles on a regular basis now in the unlikely event that you cared), and curse the gathering darkness.

By which I don't mean the economic and political Armageddons looming on the horizon, though they're sufficiently gloom-inspiring all by themselves, but rather the inexorable retreat of the sun toward the southern hemisphere and the shorter days and chillier nights that trail behind it. The corner of the park where I do t'ai chi, a location bathed in sunshine from May until September, will spend the next six months swathed in shadows cast by nearby buildings. The running track still gets sun over all but the southern quadrant, but that won't last much longer either. And soon the feeble bits of sun that manage to work their way through the winter murk won't even put a dent in the frigid winds howling down from the north.

It seems kind of stupid to be whining about the onset of winter at the moment; apart from a coldish spell that fell upon us in the first week of October, we've been enjoying some of the most beautiful weather imaginable these past several days. Even now, after midnight, my windows are all open and I could comfortably stroll out into the street wearing no more than a t-shirt and jeans. And this is supposed to carry on for most of the week to come.

But I'm not fooled; this interval of what used to be called Indian Summer (perhaps it still is; I'm just guessing that some identity politics crackpot or other would have put a stop to that usage by now) makes it all the more clear what lies ahead: three, four, maybe even five months of bundling up in heavy clothes and dashing as quickly as possible from doorway to subway and back again. No more time for leisurely street corner chats or lolling about in the park until three in the morning on one of those summer nights when eternity doesn't seem like such a very long time after all.

Autumn used to be my favorite season and October my favorite month, and not merely because it's my birthday month (if anything, the contrary, since I've a long history of not particularly successful birthdays). But something has changed, and now it's all about summer. The whole rest of the year seems to be about wishing it was summer, anticipating summer, or grieving summer's passing. Probably not the best way to live for someone who insists on dwelling this far north. But then what would New York be like if it had Miami's (or Honolulu's) climate? Very different, I'm guessing, and not necessarily in a good way.

Anyway, I've chosen to live here and it seems as though I should at least make a stab at embracing the nine months of the year that aren't summer, especially considering that at my age, three-month years tend to spin by rather quickly. And life seems to be looking up, despite rampant disaster in the economic sphere. I'm cautiously optimistic about the election, I've just found a new apartment down the block which is about a zillion (well, half zillion, anyway) times better than my current hovel, and at the end of the week I'm off to Paris to see the Zatopeks and Copyrights and celebrate my birthday.

Of course I'm a little concerned that if things continue to deteriorate at the rate they've been, I could find myself overseas the day they close down all the banks and declare our currency worthless, and thus end my days as a vieux clochard in one of the less renowned arrondissements.

Last week my niece Gabrielle Bell and I went to see Alice Munro speak, and it filled me with dreams of Ontario, the flat, nondescript and superficially uninviting southwest corner thereof where many of my ancestors inexplicably chose to settle, and where Munro, who could at this point live anywhere she wished to, continues to dwell. There was something very comforting in her flat, slightly clipped tones that evoked memories of a dozen or more aunts and cousins who displayed that same matter-of-fact devotion to simply getting on with it, a quality I see in Gabrielle herself when she tackles her drawing, even if she's barely ever set foot in Ontario.

I think she and I will make a pilgrimage up there someday soon, the only question being whether to do it now and risk the early onset of a Canadian winter, or wait till spring, which can be a pretty fickle and unreliable commodity in those parts. For me personally, I'd prefer to ramble across Ontario in the bleakness of November than the perennially false dawn of April, but that's probably just me being moody. I should get to bed. Big day of moving tomorrow.

Sunshine

A somewhat chilly and rainy autumn-like night seemed like a good time to see a movie about flying a rocket ship to the sun.

Sunshine is based on some dubious - or at least highly speculative - science: the notion that when our sun begins to die, plunging earth into an eternal ice age, it can be kick-started back to life by dropping something called a "stellar bomb" the size of Manhattan into its core.

Never mind that I'd always been under the impression that a) when the sun actually dies, it will erupt into a supernova that will incinerate the planets as far out as Mars or Jupiter; b) that the biggest nuclear explosion human beings can generate would have about as much impact on the sun as dropping a lit match into a forest fire the size of Texas, this tale of eight astronauts attempting to pilot a bomb-bearing spaceship straight into the sun is a riveting tale indeed.

Of course there's also the fact that if you really want to deliver something to the sun, it's pretty simple: just blast a rocket in its general direction and by the time your rocket is inside the orbit of Venus, the sun's gravity should take care of the rest (any astrophysicists reading this, fell free to correct me). Okay, so the whole premise of the film is utter nonsense; it's still great entertainment, and as one review said, "You'll never look at the sun in the same way again."

For instance, I've always had a pretty good opinion of our nearest star. Apart from the occasional sunburn and the paint peeling off my old car from from overexposure (but that's more the stupid Toyota Motor Company's fault than Old Sol's), the sun has been nothing but good to me. I mean, think about it: it sits there for billions of years dishing out warmth and light and making all life possible without asking a thing in return. I mean, you don't get much more benign than that. No wonder the ancients worshiped it as a god.

But in this film - and here I have no reason to doubt the science - as soon as you get in closer proximity, the sun becomes the ultimate killing machine, capable of incinerating anyone or anything in the blink of an eye (and, speaking of eyes, capable of instantly and permanently blinding anyone who looks at an almost totally filtered version of it).

Of course it doesn't help that people seem to get a little loopy - make that a lot loopy - as they enter into the sun's gravitational field, but I'll say no more about that for fear of spoiling the plot for those of you who might wish to see it. Because this isn't exactly a high-budget film, the sets and the effects are somewhat limited, but are effective nonetheless, even though they often consist of little more than flashing lights and some great crashes and bangs that sound not unlike what you'll hear in a multi-level subway station.

Which was why, waiting for the L train at 6th Avenue while the F and V rumbled overhead, and seeing the lights of the train as it came barreling down the tunnel toward me, I pretty much relived the terror of the film while at the same time marveling at the way many things we think of as completely mundane and normal are very nearly as amazing as rocket ships that go to the sun.

When I got out at my stop just as a rocket ship-sized semi roared past on Metropolitan Avenue and then left me standing there in sudden silence as the rain started to fall in earnest, it felt more autumn-like than ever, and for once I didn't feel at all melancholy about the prospect. In fact, after what I'd just seen, taking a bit of a break from the sun seemed downright inviting.