It is the time of year when coats accompany everyone like second skins, making friends and acquaintances immediately identifiable even from a distance when outside, remaining behind as a reminder of their presence when they get up to go to the bathroom or find a book. They add so much to people's personalities that they are like character in physical form. I can almost imagine that if I wore another person's coat for a while, I would eventually become that person. Forget shoes, walk a mile in someone else's coat. Put on James Dean's jacket and lean against a brick wall with a cigarette and soon enough you'll be slightly mournful and act recklessly. Take Lincoln's jacket and stand at a lectern and surely great eloquence will flow from your lips.

I'm surprised there isn't some ritual involving the resurrection of the dead by means of their coat. Well, there's that scene in Beetlejuice I guess. I can't help but think there's more of a person in his or her coat than in any other object they keep with them. The question then arises, does the personality come from the coat or does the coat pick it up over time, like a cat rolling around on concrete? Does the coat call out to its future wearer from the clothing rack? Does a tailor possess the creative power of a deity?

A coat resting on the back of a chair, when its wearer is somewhere else, transforms a whole room into a warehouse for souls. It sits inert, waiting for the mind that it completes to return. I almost expect that its wearer will sprout from beneath it, arms filling out sleeves, and walk away. At any moment, the coat itself might just rise into mid-air and start cooking dinner or watching television.

My last day at work, and one of the treasurers I work with just left me a message and said "so if you can holler back at me, I'll be here this morning."

A student just came up to the circulation desk holding an open book. "Excuse me," he said, "I have a question. Why does it have errors?"

I took the book from him and glanced down at the page. "What do you mean?"

"Like the year, punctuation . . . is it just typos?"

"Yeah," I said, and handed the book back to him.

"Okay, thank you," he said, and placed the book in the return cart.

October

Fall: the plants bulge with ripeness, sagging under their own weight, ready to die. The sunlight is diffuse and cold but also comforting, like the light from a fish tank when you're the only one left awake in the house; it has all the clemency that is missing from the merciless sunlight in mid spring. The ground sags and crumbles under each step, the moist remains of decaying leaves, spilled apple cider, acorns that didn't take root. The air is the breath of ghosts, the air drifts out of brick fireplaces and crawls out from underneath porches, unfurls out of old oak chests and billows out of the creases of long-unused wool blankets. The air is what the world will feel like when it finally stops running, chill and calm.

It rained yesterday, water showering down from the grey sky that was not mournful but mischievous. It splashed against the window and trickled down in little rivers, and pattered across the roof like all the steps ever taken there by cats that once were, like fingertips fluttering across a piano's keys at midnight. Such a relief after the onslaught of summer, which made a very great campaign this year indeed. Summer conquered all that came before its wrathful eyes, and hoarded its spoils in a cave by the seaside. It settled there to drink and eat continuously, never sated, and thus engorged its body with the stolen goods. Now it lies prone and rotting, overthrown by its own greed. The rain crept over to laugh at it softly.

Now night comes on like a festival, decking the sky with its banners of stars, making streamers out of the rustling leaves and tent flaps out of the shimmering horizon. Crickets spring about as jesters with fiddles, and every uncertain step in darkness is a roaring carnival ride. The moon is the bard of the world and it knows every song that ever was, because they were all written for the moon. Cats creep through the darkness, preying on unsuspecting revellers who don't keep a close enough eye on their wallets. The cotton candy air is sweet and pulls off in soft chunks, then melts on your tongue. Sometimes if you stand outside long enough until the wee hours of the morning, you can almost see the workmen come along and take it all down.

"The flowers cool from the on-going fires, the beginning-death of nature, into another warmth of the confession of the sin of picking, a warmth that is insularand yet is a secret bondage with the human hand, the ally of the blooming--the fulfillment--the entelechia of the flower. The counter of the plucking is the arranging, the arranging that takes place (wonderful phrase, takes place!) between streaming fingers. Rather than arranging, could we say weaving? The flowers, now having found each other again in the vase, can we see the basket?"

-From a 1980 Friday night lecture by Thomas Harris entitled "Work"

Thomas Harris sure was most exceptionally crazy. This is the second essay of his I've looked at here at the library, and neither one at any point even began to make sense. Going to his lectures must have been like having someone read Finnegan's Wake without even knowing English.