The Death of Imagination

So ends another postseason for our hometown champions. Plenty of blown opportunities, some headscratching decisions from Metheny (keeping Wacha in after a four-pitch walk?), and the Redbirds are done. It was a terrific run--almost every game was a nailbiter. And I got a little taste of the post-Molina era. I'm glad it's not upon us yet, because it will be a sad sad day indeed, but at least I know the Cards will still have it in them to make their foes struggle to hold them back.

On the plus side, I've got my evenings back. It's cooler and damper these days, but it's still strolling weather. And the colours are definitely peaking. The early-changing locusts are nearly bare after the days of wind and rain, but their golden leaves are still plastered to the asphalt below. And as the most brilliant of the maples begin to shed as well, the torch is going to the ashes, whose maroon seems particularly vivid this fall. Meanwhile, the hawthorns and the Bradfords are only just getting started.

Even the less-showy leaves are impressive. Today I was walking under a simple hackberry and just the play of pale yellow ranging almost to white against light-green was captivating. It'll be chilly this weekend, but as long as it's also dry that won't stop me from going out. Today I didn't even need a jacket, just a long-sleeved overshirt. (Granted, I wasn't out long.) Maybe I'm pushing it keeping the plants outside this late and I should be spending that time potting them up for indoors instead, but I feel like chancing it.

Yesterday at midmorning, I was in the basement moping about how I was about to let another gorgeous Double Nine slip away without climbing any heights. Between laundry and a Kurosawa film, the afternoon was shot before it'd even begun. And where could I go anyway? This is Chicago, where an elevation of a couple meters is enough to get a street named "Ridge".

Then it occurred to me: Rosehill! I jumped in the shower so I'd be ready to go when the GWO left to do the Clark errands. At the bus stop, his tracking app announced we'd have 18 minutes to wait. Since the distance to the cemetery was something I could cover in 15 minutes, I didn't see any percentage in waiting, kissed my spouse goodbye, and struck out down the alley parallel to Paulina.

At first, the grounds seemed unusually empty for a Sunday morning. But a car passed, then another, and I saw that I was coming up upon a graveside service. I veered off, noting that a line of mausolea would keep me out of view as I sat on the steps at the marshy eastern edge of the central pond. I stripped off my overshirt, which had been a good idea earlier, but was now too warm for a spot in the sun.

In my bag I had pills, an apple, and two books. One of these contained a tale from Dazai Osamu that I'd been saving for this day: "The chrysanthemum spirit", a translation of 清貧譚 (lit. "A tale of honest poverty"). The title is something of a spoiler. After finishing that, I started "The mermaid and the samurai" (人魚の海) but decided to go in search of a bench.

I rounded the pond, tracing the edge of a newly-removed lane on the south side, and settled under a hawthorn tree opposite the earth-covered chapel in the middle of the grounds where I finished the second tale. The second book, which I'd brought foreseeing this eventuality, was Mishima's Thirst for love (愛の渇き). But I was perfectly content simply to sit there in the sunlight gazing out or lightly closing my eyes.

Elsewhere sugar maples are turning, but inside Rosehill virtually everything is still green. In terms of fall colours, it was a bust. The geese were gone, although their shit was still everywhere, and I could hear cicadas. It was a very summery fall day.

Eventually my attention was caught by a small woman in a sweatshirt hauling something away from a gravesite. (There was a sign near the entrance warning people to remove anything they didn't want discarded.) A bit further away, I saw two dark-haired women strolling. I decided to head off in that direction to get a better look at a brightly-coloured mass that turned out to be a clump of fake autumn foliage. Then I caught the scent of...burnt tortilla?

No, incense sticks from the spot where the two women had been. There were three groupings of them, two at graves and one at the base of a nearby tree. One of the graves also had two persimmons and a mass of deep orange sticky rice which a little research back home revealed to be xôi gấc.

At this point, I cut due south to the Jewish section, which I make a point of passing through on each visit ever since the time when I spotted a fox among the graves. No luck today (unless you're willing to count a sandy-haired old man in an Indiana sweatshirt) so I followed the wall up to the Masonic section where I found a monument for the Apollo Commandery of the Knights Templar.

At this point, I was feeling the need for some lunch and decided to head straight back to Clark. When I got there, I realised I was across the street from Gethsemane, so I popped in to use their restroom and talk to their shrubs staff. They hadn't heard of Abeliophyllum distichum (a.k.a. "white forsythia") but they did find a record of ten Kerria japonica 'Pleniflora' which had been acquired for a landscaper; if there are any left at their offsite facility, they'll call me tomorrow. As I left the beardy young thing who took my number complimented me on my "good taste".

From there, I walked back up through Edgewater Glen, stopping off at a garage sale to acquire a healthy rose-of-Sharon seedling. The woman who sold it to me (and whose charming New Orleans accent reminded me of how my Baltimore-born grandmother talked) said they were winter hardy even in pots, so I replanted it in a terracotta pot on the patio.

The Old Man and I discussed bringing the azaleas in to prevent damage to their blossoms, but in the end we decided to leave them out there. We've got some fine weather ahead of us still. Later, he made himself a Last Word, I shook a little Korean chrysanthemum wine with ice, and we toasted what he called "one of the happiest weekends of my life". I'll drink to many more like that one.

I know I say this every September, but this is the kind of weather I wait all year for. (So why don't I just move to California? Because: (a) I like snow, too and (b) I really like having spending money.) I first noticed the honey locusts turning week before last, but the muggy air and dry conditions prevented me from seeing it as the first signs of fall. Every day, I see trees which are dead or dying because no one kept them watered. It's going to be an unspectacular fall for foliage.

As we were standing around topside at lunchtime waiting for tour groups, everyone kept remarking on the intensity of the sunlight. Well, that's what happens when there's no longer a haze in the air at all hours. Yesterday was every bit as beautiful, which made me regret scheduling a movie viewing with the Old Man, since the only slot in his schedule for such a thing is late afternoon, the nicest time to be out. I thought about excusing myself to wash to windows, since I figured it was a reason for being outside he could fully get behind, but in the end I succumbed to the lure of the couch and cuddling.

The movie was Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 and it was awful--the same boring slog every one of them has been since the first--but it made our decision to serve sausage, mash, and peas for dinner that much more amusing. If only there'd been sticky toffee pudding for dessert! I'd wanted to put together a Zwetschgendatschi, but at some point I realised that would be too ambitious. Instead, we each had an apple. Now that you're finally here, Mature Woman Fall, don't be in a hurry to leave!

I haven't said anything so far about the last couple of Cardinals game because the less said about them the better. I do think that Lynn has gotten unfairly scapegoated for his bad throw to the bag in Game 5. A couple extra runs here or there is immaterial if the opposing pitcher is able to completely shut out your offence. Same goes for last night. Am I disappointed in Carpenter's performance? Of course I am. But I'm more worried about the hitting. If the Cards can't get more than one run off of Vogelsong in fourteen innings, what on earth are they going to do when faced with Verlander? At least the fielding recovered; I told monshu that it was like watching one of those underdog movies where some spell/mcguffin that is handicapping our heroes is miraculously removed halfway through the big conflict.

Knowing the next couple days would be wet, I'd fully intended to get outside for a walk on Sunday afternoon, but somehow it just didn't happen. I could blame the cold I'm coming down with but, truth be told, it didn't really begin to blossom until today. At least this time around I made sure to have my zinc handy, since this really isn't a week I can afford to be sick. A new project has landed in my lap at work and I've got until the end of the week to wrap it up. It's in a building across the meadow from here, so at least it gets me outside, and on the way there's a truly stunning sugar maple in full scarlet drag. The dogwoods are turning as well, as are the Bradford pears; not long now until we'll be left with nothing but bare branches.