like a bicycle with training wheels...

 Here in the hills, Autumn is rolling in, like a little girl on her bicycle with training wheels. Nothing is overly dramatic, nothing officially disastrous. The leaves don't know which way to go, whether to stay green, turn color, or fade into dust in the gentle air. While the corn is brittle in a blowing wind, the latter seems to have gone on vacation. 

 It is that time of year when it feels right to write in passive tense, as if now we can show more sentimentality, yet tell the story in third person. And while autumn tends to stir reminiscing, it leads into a season full of stories, including the greatest of them all. Such a time culminates in A Christmas Story and It's A Wonderful Life, reminding even the Pagan multitude that Autumn, though a slow-going story, transforms into winter, and ends in a celebration of the climax of all events in history.

 In my life, autumn has brought such clarity during reflection that it usually brings heightened creativity. It was during an autumn that I first wrote the opening lines to my first novel. It was during an autumn that I wrote my first play. It is, as they used to say, a season for inspiration, as all the world around whispers the coming of the dramatic, when winter comes calling at the cabin door...