Out of the blue

There's a day that always comes in the first two weeks of September, and always suddenly: the pivot from summer to fall. The steam disappears, the air is crystalline. The blue mountains jump out at the horizon. And everything is different.

In 2001, that day was Tuesday, September 11.

All that afternoon I walked and prayed in the garden (which has gone steadily downhill from neglect ever since). On a clear day I saw forever, or at least far enough to foresee too many of the atrocities that have unfolded: roundups, indefinite detention, torture, massive surveillance and spying, enabling acts, endless war.

Today the neighborhood is swaddled in a soft, clammy rain that feels as if it will never leave. I know intellectually the system is just the edge of a tropical storm, and that the clear day, the big change, will come soon. It must; it always has.

And when it does, I'll go back to the garden.