October

In California, this is about when the cooler fall weather begins to creep in, oscillating with bouts of warm sun. Nice and warm today with a pleasant cool breeze. Walking the dogs this evening, upon gazing down a street with dual rows of trees slowly growing gold in the waning sunlight, I detected a faint whiff of Cola gummies, which gave way into a cloud of gasoline and exhaust as a car passed. The dwindling light and creeping cold induces occasional waves of dread, supposedly a common trait among those with an affective disorder.

Perhaps an inheritance from primitive ancestors that grew to fear the coming winter frosts, as their very survival was threatened by it? With an affective disorder, which is basically an increasing emotional instability, it is almost as if the shielding obscuring the lower brain is lifted as it struggles to assert itself, bringing into full view an engine fashioned in ancient times, with all of the attendant quirks. And the executive's eyes grow into saucers as it becomes apparent it will have to manage an increasingly turbulent landscape of sinking despair with occasional eruptions of manic grandiosity and urgency. 

In the course of a single day one can find oneself lost amongst surging currents of incredible grief, to be deposited on a distant shore shaken, yet alive, with the subsequent euphoria that comes with survival triggering another mad rush of thought and feeling. Exhausting, this life, but worthwhile.