I have a pair of shorts which I wear around my apartment at all times. They've been designed such that you can't tell which is the front and which is the back. There's no tag, neither side is larger than the other, and the pockets seem to work either way. Damn them. Every time I put on my frickin' pants I feel like I have to solve a mystery. Surely there's a right way and a wrong way to put them on. Anyway...

I've been feeling numbness in the fingers of my left hand for the last week or two, off and on. I thought for a while it might be the start of a carpal tunnel problem, since it seemed to appear in the late evening, which I believe to be good indicia. My mother suffers from the same symptom, among others, but much worse. Well, I've been feeling it at other times during the day, so I've dismissed that diagnosis. That leaves just one other explanation... Surely it can be nothing less than .... MS. hahah Always jump to the worse scenario, of course. I'm not even sure numbness is a symptom of MS, but why let such considerations get in the way. This raises an interesting question, though--now that I have MS, what should I do? I guess it all depends upon the swiftness of its progression--can't jump to any conclusions here without doing a little homework. But taking a pessimistic view (of course) ... what to do? I think I'll leave that for another day.

I was thinking of the approaching fall--Labor Day and how it marks the end of summer in our minds if not on the calendar. Everyone says they love the fall--"It's my favorite season. blah blah blah." Please. That allegiance to autumn is always betrayed by the inevitable "But I hate to see summer end." What we love about fall is the melancholy it evokes. There is a depth of emotion in the fall that draws us inward. It's raining lightly at the moment, has been much of the day--slightly cool, very quiet. It could easily be a rain in June, but we all know it's a fall rain, and so it has the tint of melancholy to us.

It's been a quiet day, which I love. But on the quiet days I seem to wind myself up into real aggitation thinking of all the things I'd like to accomplish. I won't bore you further with the litnany of things. Despite it all, I think I just want to lie on the couch and read a little, but mostly nap until bed time. I want to nap.

This melancholy is not simply the vague, ill-defined melancholy of fall. It's supported.

Ann has predicted my sudden demise stemming from the close proximity of my toaster to the sink--my electrocution from a freak, but not entirely unpredictable, accident involving tangled toaster and can opener cords and a sink of dirty dish water. Perhaps I'm sealing my own fate by mentioning it, but it does render moot the whole MS thing. One thing I'd want to do, however, given a prognosis of MS, is to listen to all the music I have in my collection. Will my habit of toasting a raisin English muffin in the morning while washing dishes rob me of that, I wonder.

Not all melancholy is created equal. The exquisite melancholy of the Versailles gardens during grey skies and a summer rain is one thing. The melancholy of diminishing horizons and viable alternatives is another. Perhaps that is called depression. hahah Well, I don't really feel depressed. But I do have a sense of being boxed in. The doorways opening to rectangles of white light have been replaced by a patchwork of faded drapes converging upon a nondescript beige. Incandescent has replaced florescent, and I'm being jostled about inside a dusty old lamp shade. I'll come to rest in one of the slots, but one gets the feeling it doesn't much matter which one.