October

I made the 45-minute commute on my bike this morning from Bin Jiang to Xiaoshan in order to spend the weekend in solitude. My older student, Tina, has company for the next three days. Her mother is visiting from Seoul, Korea and I really don’t feel like making polite small talk when I know I have a mountain of writing and research to do for PhD applications. So, I’m devoting the next 48 hours to reading, writing, and maybe some pizza and a movie.

I started my morning with a 7:00 am trip to Starbucks, grabbing a hot drink for the road. During my leisurely drive across the city, I noticed it is the beginning of leaf-burning season in Hangzhou. A local farmer was out early in the morning in order to send off more carbon dioxide into and already-polluted atmosphere. As the smell of the smoke hit me, I thought of all those fall days back home when little fires burnt on the side of the street in my childhood neighborhood in Michigan. Fall is my favorite time of the year and now that southern China has finally begun to calm itself out of a suffocating summer, I can finally start to look forward to sweaters, scarves, colorful foliage, and soy caramel macchiatos.

Because W.S. Merwin got it right: “Echoing Light”