I don't want much, and I'm not willing to give up anything. I don't want to get open, I don't want to share. I don't want to lean and I don't want to get comfortable.

Tonight more than a heartbeat might be too much. But I wouldn't mind one of those against the street lamp fog and frozen breath.

It wasn't so bad, realizing I couldn't go back. Discovering I didn't want to though. Well.

Here comes something.

(This is my favourite time of year.)

I know.

I know better.

I know...

But, I know... and that's no adventure.

But. I know.

I am sighing a sigh of relief.

I'm also sighing a sigh of resignation, I think, because...I just...

I don't know. I'm tired, and November will be hell, and I think what I want is just tiny, really, and I'm tired and probably it should be easy.

I don't think there's another composer for me like Beethoven. And that's a deliberately poor sentence. Not that he composed for me, though maybe for people like me, what he does for me, for me there isn't another composer like Beethoven. I can't even quite explain it, it's the same thing that makes a pair of trousers or the light on a dirty window sill break my heart. There's... to say there's nothing there would be massively incorrect, but it's so bare. And utterly devastating. It's music for quiet destitution. It's what Death of a Salesman should have been, Willie simply biting his tongue, a small grimace and an inaudible sigh as he gets up to do it again, another morning. Beethoven's music, for me, always gets up again, in the cold light of some horrid bedroom morning, to leave some sweet, nervous woman behind in as blissful ignorance as it can. I find I can't listen to it, sometimes, I have to be careful like I'm not with other composers. I can't play it in the background lest the conversation die down and I'm caught unaware. I love it.

This is a weird spot, before everything starts, or it seems like it's going to start at least... waiting on books that will determine more or less my life, on time and jobs and the pieces I've been hewing out in my head to lock into place. The crest of the learning curve in sight. And then there's the rest of it, which I am swallowing, mostly, so as not to break it with my breath.

It's nearly autumn, practically autumn if it weren't for the fact that it's supposed to hit 29 degrees this weekend. The leaves have no idea, they've turned already. I am waiting for the snow...

I'm waiting for chaos, too, I guess. Or at least that's what I've signed on for. Prep work and this new job I dove into tonight, new things and butterflies, this winter won't be much for resting. But that's why I love it - even when everything's on fire you can't feel it. Even when I can't sleep - which, with the seasons changing, is on its way - I can't be tired in the winter. Everything sparkling is enough to keep you afloat. Summer heat makes me tired, breeds lethargy. Winter crisp makes everything just a little brighter, regardless of the backdrop.

But there's a while yet til that part comes, and in the meantime there's nothing to do but bite my tongue and wait.