Falling

It is September 10^th. Spiders are making webs all around my house. It got dark tonight at 7:30. There are guns everywhere.

Last year at exactly this time I went up north by myself and stared at a fire while listening to John Coltrane for three days. I fished for brook trout, colorful as the autumn leaves.   

Last weekend I did the same thing—The Second Annual Psychedelic Autumn Solo Brook Trout Northwoods Jazz Fire Whiskey Pilgrimage—though the playlist was diversified. A lot of Herbie Hancock, a bit of Stan Getz, plenty of Miles. More Trane, though a different record: last year it was the 1962 self-titled record, this year it was Crescent. For a long time I’d been hearing that Crescent is just as good as A Love Supreme. That was and is an exaggeration cooked up to be provocative, but I’ll say this: Crescent is very good, and better the more I listen. And it was recorded within a few months of A Love Supreme. If for no other reason than that, it deserves attention.

I again caught brook trout, though they were reluctant to rise in this year’s miserable weather. The best fish I caught was this modest brown on the South Branch of the Oconto.

I’ve been feeling a little low. Simultaneously unable to relax and too overwhelmed to do much. Too fast in the head, too slow in the body. Let’s blame the blood moon.

The truth is that the summer wasn’t that great either. Some summers feel legendary even as they’re happening, but this one slipped by without making an impression; it will have no particular narrative in my memory. With traditions of our own creation, we can bail if they’re no longer worth the effort. Seasons aren’t like that. Even if last fall sucked, you still have to show up for this one, an annual tradition to which you are both not invited and must attend.  

Then again, maybe the bailing is the problem. I hear that deer hunting is dying off. It certainly is in my family (I’m part of the problem). Deer season used to have a sort of post-mortem session during which my brother and I would discuss the season’s headlines and how it ranked among the great seasons of the past. Maybe there was value in the forgettable seasons. Maybe the important thing was to keep doing it, to make the effort, to pay the dues.

Tonight the president of this country is blaming the “radical left” for the murder, just hours ago, of an influencer in Utah. I’d like to better understand this president, would love to ask some questions. To whom are you referring? What are you possibly thinking in using this moment as a force multiplier for anger? That seems like the best move to you? What in God’s name is your end game here?

I don’t think of myself as radical or even particularly “left.” I don’t know much about history, but I think the whole Joseph McCarthy thing was about rooting out communists, right? Soviet sympathizers? Those who would side with our enemies? And now the president openly admires the enemies? If another country attacked Chicago, I think we’d be pissed, yeah? But if Chicago’s own country attacks Chicago, it’s badass? Cinematic? God damn it, I’m confused. Genuinely, deeply confused. I don’t know what conclusion to draw from this young man’s assassination today, other than to say I’m sorry for his family, sorry for everyone who witnessed it, sorry for those who will weaponize the moment, and sorry for those who will not.

We are stockpiling trauma.

Stay in your lane, middle-aged white guy who listens to jazz and goes fly fishing.

You’re right. I know.