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The moment I press 'pause' on it all.  Twilight.  Mars beaming bright above a tree still full of curly orange leaves.  Seventy-five degrees dropping slowly, a cool breeze in a warm envelope.  The creaking of some insects that survived the frosts & brief snow.  Even a small spastic bat, late for its Halloween audition.  The air is crunchy with Autumn's sweet, dry decay.  Honestly, that sentence might be too much.  Who can say, in a year such as this?

I won't look at the news.  I won't ride the rollercoaster.  I put some pumpernickel rolls in the oven to go with the huge pot of split pea soup I made last night.  Thick mushy green with chunks of carrot & potato, sharp bay leaves & the last of my birch-smoked, Icelandic sea salt (thanks AC!).  It's a good night for this new album "Crier's Bane", a collaboration by Dead Melodies & Beyond the Ghost.  The cover could be a painting of the inside of my head.  A cloaked figure looking out on a crowd of shadowy steeples in a dense fog.  What?  Was I supposed to grow out of it?