I know I've said this before, but what it feels like to me is as if I have a void...a vacuum in the middle of my chest. It swells, if nothing can swell, threatening to pull in my sternum, my spine, then out to my collarbone and my shoulder blades, my shoulders themselves, and at the very worst, all the way out to my fingertips. And all of this just wants to collapse.

I wonder that these are the only parts of my body that are effected. I think that it may be because they are the bits that I imagine I could live without. While of course this makes no sense logically, I would still be able to hear, see, vocalize, taste, think, and move even if I were missing my upper torso and arms. It may simply be a question of what I'd be willing to give up to these feelings: I need my head, I need my legs, and I need something to sit down on. But it's all a negotiation. I refuse to surrender these things, but I cannot contain the sweeping collapse within my chest. So it takes my fingers.

What would I give to make it go away.

It's hardly life, really. It's more like survival. I need to choose what to feel and what to ignore, and sometimes I get it wrong. When I do, I find myself a little huddled heap of humanity, sobbing for some stupid reason. But I teach myself not to care. It's all for the better.

Thankfully, classes have started up again to provide a welcome distraction. I once again feel horribly artistic between my three music classes, two photo classes, one dance class, and one film class. But the pack-attend-read cycle is only so absorbing.

And then the day after labor day. Wind-sweet, grey-wet, and chilly. The perfect start to fall. Summer-green leaves all around me threaten to change color and drop to the ground before my very eyes, and I can't help but want a long grey wool skirt, as I've wanted for the past two or three falls. This year I may finally get one. I'm told that we're expecting a cold fall and a colder winter, and I suspect that before it's over I will be wishing for sun, but right now, I am just so tired of summer that I don't want it to come back for quite a while. I love the heavy grey sky and the smell of snow in the air. The way wet fallen leaves on the sidewalk look as if the've been ironed with shaved crayons in between pieces of waxed paper.

It's funny the little traditions that you think are universal but are really so very local to yourself. Kat, from California her whole life, has never ironed fall leaves between pieces of waxed paper, because she never saw a real autumn until she was eighteen. And even then, all she could see were the trees in Philly; I never got to bring her home with me in the fall or the spring to see what seasons changing is supposed to look like, though I suppose Jason showed her.

And this year she escaped just before the fall of fall. Back home where it's always 65 degrees, foggy and overcast and where her lovely winter coat will be of no use at all. I imagine evergreens, there. A lot of tall cedars and short pine trees. Christmas is never supposed to be white, and you can walk barefoot all year round. It sounds lovely, but I wouldn't miss fall for it.