Ah, Octobre....

There's a man at school, a physical plant, grounds guy, and I suspect he’s a little touched.
He seems nice enough, but he’s really, really loud about it. So here he is - thin, a little bent and grizzled, old black man. Wearing a wool cap and the standard khaki uniform that a lot of the grounds people wear. Also wearing good, heavy, well worn black work boots.
He’s always hollerin’.
“Ah see ya, Ah see ya”
“Thas’ right, thas’ right”
“Amen, OH! Amen to that”
He gets a little orgasmic when he starts in on the amens.
I’ve got nothing against him, except when I’m irritable he kind of adds to it.
And I had a bit of a strange encounter with him yesterday.
He was mowing a little grass patch near the bus stop with a regular gas mower. I was sitting on the curb of it waiting for the bus. There was another woman sitting also. He started getting closer so we stood up. I have a healthy respect for propelled and moving blades. Also the stuff that comes flying out can really sting.
But he’s just hollerin’ away,
“Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, ya’ll sit, ya’ll sit now.”
Except that - he keeps mowing that strip right next to where we were sitting, over and over and over. And all the while exhorting us to sit back down there.
Hmmm.


Today and yesterday the leaves are really starting to come down. And with the quality of light it reminds me of those scenes in Legends, where the stuff is blowing and there is this odd, surreal feeling being invoked.
Especially those trees, I don’t know what they are called. But they have a bunch of tiny leaves on rows of stems coming off the branch.
Are they poplars? I can’t remember and I don’t feel like looking it up right now.
But the tiny little leaves are yellowed and blow in great sweeps of colour, beautiful.
Soon we’ll start getting those little dust devils of leaves. When we were kids, out on they playground, if one came up you would try to run and get inside it. You’d then stretch out your arms and spin with it.
It looked really great from the outside when it was your friend that was doing it. But the reality was that when it was you inside, you got crap in your eyes and leaves in your hair and usually come out of it spitting.