this Chicago morn…

The great change is upon us on mornings like this.

The Mexican mothers walk to mass, their shoulders stooped against the incessant wind, the fallen leaves – red, yellow, orange – swirling at their feet.

I watch the women pass below, sitting as I am at the window, the wind whistling like a league of wraiths on the corners of our apartment. Reminding me, on this early November day, of the cold and bitter season to come.

My wife, in the chair opposite, reading Kierkegaard for a class, amuses me with anecdotes on his reflections of how stupid and boring the world has become. (1843)

Briefly, I wonder what he would think of what the world has become in the intervening 170 odd years. But I doubt he would see much change, rather, there would only be a shrug of the shoulders, same as it ever was.

The weather heaves mightily against our windows, the people heave against each other, winter will come, followed by spring.

Everything changes, yet it is but an instant from Kierkegaard’s lament on the boring stupidity of the political situation.

A particularly violent shriek of wind wakens the cat from his slumber on the desk and he watches, in his dosing, as the yellow birch bends and dances in the wind.

I watch as autumn leaves are being shredded from the trees and fly about like great flakes of snow.

The rain begins, wind-driven, it taps heavily against the panes. It is a good day for a pot of soup and homemade bread I think to myself.

Borges, Kierkegaard, soup, slumbering cats, a chair by the window.

All we need is a lighthouse lamp, a means of pointing out the way, to a safe harbor, on these feckless wind-lusting days.