and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

It's 6:03pm on a sleepy Sunday afternoon and the clouds are slowly sneaking away for an early bedtime but the sun is still ra-ra-shish-boom-ba because it's fucking august and the summer isn't over yet, baby. It isn't over yet and I know it because I spent a weekend in the soft embrace of a wet drizzly weekend of cottaging and the summer has never before let me down with such a melancholy weather weekend, not to end things off. No way no how.

The summers here in Maine have always been about happy endings for me, sliding sideways into autumn like bellhorn on a sprint towards home, the lights flickering far up above, the fans cheering and, even when it's over, they're milling about and taking their time because nobody nobody wants to see it end. It's summer.

So it works it's way through september, getting cold at night sometimes and october brings in the real frosts but truly, it's still just summer in brisk clothing, the leaves taking on the color that the sun has lost in the chilly temperatures. The reds and yellows, purples and pinks all shine brightly in the morning dew as if the energy of the light were coming straight from them, not through them. It isn't until late October, really, with the sun hanging low all day long on the horizon, barely getting high enough to see over the roof tops, this is the true dusk of summer. It's when the cold bites through your sweater and the ra-ra-shish-boom-ba of the big ball-o-nuclear fun just isn't what it used to be. A puppydog in it's twilight years, eyes blazing and tail wagging furiously while the ragged old body of bones lays tired and unwilling to play anymore.

The comes a time when every pet must be taken for that one last walk; out behind the house and around to the backside of the shed or barn or whatever old piece of building is available - one that's been around long enough to know how to look the other way. When it's time the hope is that they will look the other way, too, this sad little creature of unwavering devotion. They will look out across the grass, thinking of sticks retrieved long ago, or mice caught, or balls chased. This is the hope, that maybe when they go they go at that exact moment when they've jumped up, lunging through the air, and snapped that ball out of the sky. That maybe their thoughts right then, in that single instant, is where they will wander off to as they shuffle off their mortal coil. Then *BANG*, it's jumpy in your hands and you almost forgot you were the one pulling the trigger. It seems like years ago that you pulled back the hammer and raised the muzzle but it's been mere seconds. In the time it takes for the smoke out of the barrel to wisp away on the autumn breeze you've lost your train of thought and you're reeling, backwards onto the heels of your feet you tip leaning the top of your body forward like a toddler learning to walk. It's as if the recoil has just now hit you and staring down you notice like nothing you've ever noticed before you notice oh god you notice this little tired body - carcass - lying at your feet. Time is faster or slower now, unsure, but looking around everything looks almostly painfully the same that it's maddening knowing you cannot perceive the entire earth world universe tipping upside down but you can if you trust your instincts your little internal clocks and gadgets, whirly-gigs and gyroscopes. You can feel the whole of everything shifting into a new gear.

So bang, indeed, November comes in like a bullet - not sharp but fast, and swift, so you almost don't even know it until you feel the warm blood on your outside, as confusing as the dead animal you carry into the woods. It's supposed to be on the inside, after all this blood is supposed to be on the inside. It truly is brisk, november, not like a cool summer's evening but like a cold dry martini, the crushed ice spun 'round in place with the blade of a steel knife. Outside, the first spittings of snow; mother nature slips on her white coat. Inside, the olives sink slowly to the bottom through vermouth and vodka with the forebooding of winter.