was sitting outside on a gentrified boulevard eating a cold cucumber salad with some vinegar and berries, in the shade, and a really big grasshopper came flying in and landed on me, perched above my eyebrow, so i closed that one eye and let bug chill while continuing to eat my salad, because why not? summer day, hot but not simmering, nice calming breeze carrying scent of the nearby river, wind dissipating the forest fire smoke, just hanging out, in no rush to get rid of the bug, a bug trapped in this bug-unfriendly in the concrete-brick-asphalt landscape of the neighborhood. a woman also sitting nearby looked over and said: ādonāt you know ⦠you have a bug on your face?ā and yes, i have noticed the large 7-centimeter-long insect on my face. i smiled but didnāt say anything, she grimaced. grasshopper and i are enjoying the late summer weather. people walk by in swimwear and sandals, still wet from the river. but just then. someone went walking into a nearby shop, and when the doorway opened: a rush of balsam fir, pumpkin, vanilla, apple, cinnamon. they have their autumn stuff prepared. i changed. immediately, i felt like a great white shark, a cat, a ghost. like a sharkās eyes glazed over black, like a catās pupils expanding into the silly zone, like a possession. it was autumn. the light breeze now seemed more potent, like a foreshadowing of a storm. but everything still appeared bright, the swimwear on passersby seemed not just inappropriate, but almost ominous:Ā ādonāt you know ⦠you donāt have much time, the sun is setting, there are Things stalking the Night.ā temporal break, both late summer and autumn simultaneously. amazing how powerful the sense of smell is, the way it immediately and dramatically conjures other memories and times and places.