That's Amore

I’m in love.

I must be; all the signs are there.

I write bad poetry, I sing or hum little songs all day long, there’s an extra spring in my rather springy step, I turn off the television and read by a fire. If this isn’t love, then I am probably having a mid-life crises, which means that my ticket is up at 56, which is when the normal midlife crisis usually kicks in.

So who, you are asking, am I in love with?

You are asking that, right?

I mean, what would be the point if I were to open with such a blatant statement if at some point in the article I wasn’t going to proclaim my undying devotion and adoration? And don’t try to scan down to see if you name is there. That’s cheating!

But still, if I didn’t tell you, it would be a pretty weak article.

Even though I am a third-rate hack who sometimes writes second rate material, I do understand some basic rules of writing. This first being: if it bleeds, it leads.

Oh, no. Wait. This isn’t that kind of article.

The first being, grab your audience with a first line that is trite and requires the rest of the article to explain, then string your readers along until you can provide a weak wrap-up and is somehow loosely tied into the trite opening.

And see, here we are a full page down and you are still reading. If you weren’t reading then . .. well, you are going to miss out. But, of course, you don’t know that you are going to miss out, since you aren’t reading these words telling you that you are going to miss out and pretty much these words are written as filler for those people who are still reading!

Gads, am I a psychologist’s dream sans a Thorizine drip or what?

Alright, alright, alright. I can see you’re reaching for the mouse to go find porn.

I’m in love with . . . Fall.

Yeah, the season. Autumn. That’s right.

You gotta problem with that, Bub?

Fall has settled over the Salt Lake Valley, and if you have never seen Autumn in the Wasatch . . . well, you haven’t really missed much. Certainly there are better and more picturesque places to see the leaves change and the sweaters come out, like Maine, or New Mexico.

Well, not New Mexico.

But Salt Lake certainly comes in a close third. At least in the top twenty-five.

But I love Fall.

I like all the other seasons as well, but not in the same way. We’re just friends. Maybe friends with benefits.

Fall is great for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s cooler, and that’s always a big plus when you live in the high desert, since the operative word in summer is “desert”. Secondly, since the Mormon’s arrival and subsequent terra-forming over the last 150 years, fall is experienced not as they did: freezing to death without scenery, but rather freezing to death with scenery.

Oh, and the freezing to death part can easily be abated by that most Fall (and manly) of events: lighting a fire. The Mormon’s didn’t invent that for Utah though. I am missing most of the hair from my eyebrows and knuckles due to the conflagrations that rage inside my apartment each evening. What is it about a fire that makes men want to piule as much wood and flammable products onto them?

Maybe it’s a Neanderthal effort to keep the cold and the wild beats at bay by cranking the heat up to London Broil. That tradition has become the inviting of friends to sit and talk. Of course, my friends are smart enough to have moved far enough away that they don’t have to share my fire. Usually this is at the request of health professionals.

I’ve also found that some of the phrases associated with Fall are fun to say. Of course there is the standard “Trick-of-Treat” which has been my favorite since, oh . . . when I realized you could get free candy with it. And not just one or two peices of sugar-free nastiness, but a whole sack-full of fat-filled goodness. Enough to make you sick and still smile with a smear of chocolate and candy-corn across you greedy lips. If you were smart you wore two costumes, one under the other, and went back for seconds!

But there is also, as a radio advertisment pointed out, such great phrases as Autumnal Equinox. It’s fun to say out loud.

No really. Try it. I’ll wait.

And of course who can forget the phrase Holiday Season? That just has such a great tone to it, and it opens all those wonderful sense memories. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. What a great way to wind down the years with four holidays right in a row. One for each month with days off! We won’t get another holiday until mid-February (which no one can spell correctly anyhow) and then it’s that lamest of holidays: Valentines Day.

Oh wait, I opened this article by saying I was in love, didn’t I? Ahh, the lame tie-in at least. I should end here. No, that’s a little too lame

I’ll end here.