In Just One Week In Autumn

 

"And you stand on your stoop or in your door yard at mid-afternoon and watch the cloud shadows rush across Griffin's pasture and up Schoolyard Hill, light and dark, light and dark, like the shutters of the god's being opened and closed."

~Stephen King

Salem's Lot

It's only been a week. Just one week. 

And that's not counting my own daily events. It was one of those weeks that makes you turn to Stephen King, just to make it all make sense.

Here's more in pictures...

 

And there was so much more, including taking Simon and Tyler to be neutered and microchipped. Tyler took the long ride over the Altamont pass really well, Simon, not so much. While in his travel kennel, he cried LOUD and jumped around. He pulled at the metal screen and scared his mommy for about 50 miles of the 70 mile trip. Sigh. But he stopped all complaining when we turned on the 80's channel on Siris XM. What had been a nerve wracking trip, suddenly became a fun filled trip for the whole family. The kitties were in the pet hospital for a couple days, so naturally their mommy got so nervous that her kitties weren't with her, that she got hives! I am so stupid! But what can I say? They aren't just cats they are my babies! I am thoroughly in love with both of them, and I am trying to get photos, but kitten energy makes it tough! Oh well, it will happen. If I don't drop dead from exhaustion!

Just kidding.

Halloween Countdown Film #22... Salem's Lot

 

Ben Mears is a haunted man. Haunted by his past. But it's not a ghost that's haunting Ben, but rather misplaced regret, and the monstrous grief we all face at one point in our lives. As Ben returns to his home town of Jerusalem, to face those fears and regrets that have left him a deeply damaged, he begins to realize his was right to the voice deep inside that told him to RUN!

 

“The wind makes you ache in some place that is deeper than your bones.”

 ~ Stephen King,

  'Salem's Lot

 

“The town knew about darkness.
It knew about the darkness that comes on the land when rotation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul”

 ~Stephen King

  'Salem's Lot 

 

 

 

 “If a man dethrones God in his heart, Satan must ascend to His position.”
~Stephen King,

 ’Salem’s Lot

 

 “The basis of all human fears, he thought.

 A closed door, slightly ajar.”

 
~Stephen King,

 'Salem's Lot

 

Welcome Delicious Autumn, 2025

 

“But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”

 

~Stephen King,

  ’Salem’s Lot

 

And Autumn begins. I love beginning the season with one of my favorite Stephen King quotes, and it also happens to be one of my favorite books. I fits. Although this year, it seems that summer wasn't as treacherous as previous years. I am almost... almost... feeling sentimental about it. It was like summer found it's empathy. Maybe that was it's treachery this year, or maybe it was just it was giving me a break, as it let me transition from such deep grief at losing my Hendrix, to my immense joy at finding two more loves in Simon and Tyler. But Autumn is here, and with each day to come, I will feel better and better. Autumn always heals me. And I never have to guess at it's motives!

 

Check back later today for the very first, Autumn Leaf Of The Day, for 2025! 

Migrating, Perhaps?

 

“The wind makes you ache in some place

 that is deeper than your bones.” 

~Stephen King,

  'Salem's Lot

 

Just a couple months ago I was standing on the Bat Bridge, wishing for a cool breeze to float by, and now it is here. Not unusual for November, in fact I happen to love it, I just wish the wind would usher in more birds. So far the variety has been bleak, at least it seems that way to me. Maybe that's why I see a bird in those autumn clouds. A Bank swallow to be exact. I watched them fly in and out of their nests, under the bridge on, Thornton road, last spring, and now I see a big one soaring through the clouds on it's way to who knows where? Migrating perhaps. Do you see the bird shaped cloud? How about you? What do you see?

 

Now do you see the birdy?

Goodnight Summer, Good Morning Autumn

 

“But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”

   

Stephen King

  'Salem's Lot

 

Autumn begins at 10:50 PM tonight, so it's time to say goodnight to summer, and then greet Autumn with a welcome kiss on the cheek. I have missed you old friend. Thank you for coming back.

 

Ben Mears And Rob Lowe

 

Preston Castle Wall

Ione, California

May 7th 2022

Minolta

"There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it."

 

~Shannon L. Alder

 

Preston Castle

Ione, California

Nope, not closing the book yet. Well, maybe the Twitter book, but that remains to be seen (see history). What do I mean by see history? Well, Elon Musk... the jerk... is trying to manipulate the price of the stock, and he has already said he would reinstate Trump, and you know how I feel about that, and I am not alone. Some of this shit is already firmly planted in history. The deal may not happen. We will see. If it does goes through, history will have a lot to say about it. 

 

But meanwhile back in the present. 

 

I'm not closing any doors either. I'm working on my health. Covid forced a giant detox of my eating habits. Before Covid, I ordered lean meat on my sandwiches, sliced extra thin, served with a jar of mayonnaise. Now, mayo is pretty much verboten. I can't tolerate mayonnaise, or anything oily. No fries. No jalapeno poppers. No mozzarella sticks, but there is some super healthy stuff I can't handle either. I can't have spinach, or lettuce, or any other leafy stuff like cilantro. Weird. I LOVE salad, always have. I am a veggie girl. But since Covid, I get a queasy stomach from it. Sigh.

 

I can't do much about most of it, but ride it out and hope it all goes back to normal one day, but I'm done with fucking waiting, I am taking lead and jump starting the process. Dr. Williams gave me a guide for kicking my sense of smell and taste back in. I purchased an aromatherapy machine. The sense of smell and taste go hand and hand. The idea is to choose a scent, and retrain my body to recognize it. Hopefully it will help my sense of taste if I use the same formula. I also purchased a sound machine to maybe help me get my body retrained to some healthy sleeping habits.

 

I can do this.

 

As for the mental exhaustion, again it's a matter of closing the last chapter on what happened last autumn, by closing the storage room. Hubby and I will be cleaning out the last of it next week, and that will be that. The door will be shut, with four months left on our contract at our current home. Hopefully Eric, the owner, will renew our lease, and I can take a little longer to recover, without another move. I'm trying to not think about it. I'm good right now. There is a roof over my head. I am relatively safe. And I am about to buy an air fryer to help me get back into the swing of cooking. I miss baking too. Alan has pretty much been doing everything since my breakdown, the poor man is well trained in being married to a nutjob. Sorry, chronically depressed person.

 

But he knows I eventually get back up, and I guess I will again this time too. What choice do I have? Suicide will always be sitting there, reminding me of it's availability, but, well, you know. Robin. I am trying really hard to not give up this time, in that I came so close to going though with it last fall. I have so much that I haven't shared about what has got me to this place, but as we move along I am sure the details will make themselves known. I just need to process things and go from there.

 

Now, about the "Lowe" in the title of this post. It refers to Rob Lowe. You might remember I posted about his visit to the Central Valley, when he filmed the first episode of, The Lowe Files, back in 2019. His love of the supernatural lead him to film the first episode at Preston Castle, in Ione, and that helped me find something to enjoy out here. I struggled in the first few years, as there isn't a lot to see, and photograph in and around Stockton. But Preston Castle changed all that. As did the town of Ione, Ca. The castle itself is mighty spooky and at the same time glorious. Like all truly spooky places it has a deeply troubled past, which intrigued me. In the next few years I photographed it many times over. And there is a very photogenic graveyard nearby and one of my favorite autumn trees to feature every year in my autumn leaf project, sits nearby in a small park and ride near the creek. 

 

I'm still grateful to Mr. Lowe, he will never know it, but he helped me heal. I experienced a lot of pain between 2015 and 2019 when he visited here. Because of his visit, I was interested about something again, and even slightly amused about how Preston Castle could have easily served as Hubie Marsten's house from Stephen King's, Salem's Lot, that Rob Lowe starred in. It's easy to pretend it was Ben Mears who visited here, and let my child's mind take over for a bit. Are there really ghosts roaming around among us? Perhaps. Are there vampires sleeping in an eerie house on a nearby hill? I don't know where they sleep, but I can say without a doubt that yes, there are vampires among us. That's what's got me to where I am right now.

 

Damn those vampires.

But Thank you, Ben Mears and Rob Lowe. 

 

"But when fall comes, kicking summer out on it's treacherous ass, as it always does one day sometime after the mid point of September, it stays awhile like an old friend who you have missed." 

 

~Stephen King

Salem's Lot

 

You might recall that this is my 

favorite quote to begin autumn with. 

 

 

The Midpoint Of September... PreAutumn Leaf #4

Pre-Autumn Leaf #4

September 15th, 2017 Manteca, California 

"Live in moments that consume your heart and mind,

 but be distracted by the music from the

 leaves, birds, wind, rain, sun and people."

~Val Uchendu 

Only a couple more days of summer remain... and I am intentionally ignoring it, because, frankly, autumn has already grabbed the light in the sky, the sunsets, the coolness of the air, the sweetness of every piece of music I listen to, and my creativity. As autumn begins, I always think about one of my favorite quotes by Stephen King, about the transition between summer and fall.

"But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass, as it always does one day, sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend

 that you have missed."

~Stephen King

Salem's Lot 

That, is a quote so perfect, I don't think I would ever be able to find a better one, or even come up with the words myself that fit the sense of well being each autumn brings me. The morning sun. The evening sunsets, the ripe harvest vegetables and the smell of damp, earthy, falling leaves, all in concert, deep down in my soul, causing me walk around with a dumbstruck, distracted look on my face, like I have just found love at first sight... for the 55th time! I don't know why autumn has that effect on me, but it always has, and it probably always will. It just does! 

Mood: Happy

~Me :)

 

The Presence...

"But then fall comes, kicking summer out on it's treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed.

 It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since the last time he saw you."

~Stephen King, Salem's Lot

I was amazed that while it was a very warm sunny day, when I stood in the shadow of the tree the whole world seemed eerily dark. My camera saw it too. It wasn't just the shadow, it was a deep feeling inside me, that in the shadow exists some parallel world we mortals move in and out of without consequence, or knowledge that we had left out own universe. In the moment I was standing in the shadow, it seemed that the only real light came from the crimson red and deep purple leaves, giving the impression that they weren't leaves at all, but rather something so beautiful, so singularly unique, that they bordered not on the natural color one would expect on the first day of the autumnal equinox, but rather on the supernatural. The slight chill I felt that day, made me feel like on any given late September day, but especially this one, I was merely one glance, or one shadow, away from finding myself in a Stephen King novel. And with that thought I smiled, because surely I could conquer the shadowy presence, and besides, that's what happens when one stares at autumn leaves too long. The imagination wanders... and wonders.

Shadows have a different presence in autumn.

That's all.

~

"He thrusts his fists against the posts, 

and still insists he sees the ghosts."

~Stephen King, It

Mood: Happy

~Me :)