Autumn Walk

I love fall colors! When I walked out of the house on Spring Garden this afternoon, it was sprinkling and the skies were dull and gray. Bummer, I thought. As I walked into the city, though, I passed by a park with one tree gloriously ablaze with red-orange autumn leaves, standing among a dozen ordinary green ones. It was the picture of Vibrance, the tree of Life. L'Chaim!

The skyscrapers of Market Street were shrouded in fog, and umbrellas hovered and bobbed all around me despite the fact that it was barely precipitating. In front of me, one bright orange and yellow umbrella paced the sidewalk among a dozen dull, solid-colored ones, protecting a woman from the non-rain. She walked in silence among sharp, serious-looking businessmen, who walked in equal silence. Dreary weather makes city-folk so silent! I thought to myself while listening.

The aroma of bacon and eggs and sweet-and-sour sauce and other food truck smells wafted with the autumn breeze, assaulting our noses and making one girl behind me exclaim to her friend, "Oh my GOD, that SMELL! It smells so..." I crossed the street and didn't hear the following adjective.

As I was about to walk down the steps from Naked Chocolate Cafe, a small, square gutter caught my eye. It was ringed all around with bright marigold leaves like a lion's mane, the foliage, wet and bright, stuck to the stony ground- but it was not roaring! Just glistening in silence.

Early this morning, inside the house on Spring Garden, I shared a hot cup of black chai tea and Trader Joe's canned chicken soup with my "Mishka" before he had to dash off to catch a plane to China. I had stayed up all night to keep him company as he prepared for his trip. While he scratched his head- through his new Johnny Depp/Reverse-Mohawk haircut- trying to figure out what to pack and how to pack it, I made him three cranes imbued with messages about flying for good luck and he added these talismen* to his luggage, along with his GRE material and musty-smelling Dalai Lama Halloween costume. Before I knew it, he was gulping down soup and rushing out the door for his ride, and after a few hours of sleep, I was leaving for my autumn walk in the non-rain.

*It should be "talismen" for the plural form. "Talismans" sounds so ungrammatical.