Jonathan's POZ Blog

Okay, I know I wasted over half of it already, what with being sick and stuff. But it’s time to take back October. The antibiotics are doing their antibodywork, the anti thrush meds are, um, dethrushing me. I am back in the caring, gentle, sweet hands of my ID specialist, and can actually breathe again without wheezing. I can even go get the mail without busting a fever.

So here’s the plan. This coming week? Back to the gym. Not for a full on body sculpting. But to get my feet wet, to break a sweat that’s NOT caused by knovking on heaven’s door. To get my arms back, and get my ass hard, and raise my metabolism.

Why? Because it’s OCTOBER. The most fantabulous month of the year. Fall leaves with their crunchiness, the bite in the air, apples in all their forms (usually including turning black on my kitchen table because I buy a bag and eat maybe four). Cider, hot or cold, alcoholic or not. Corn mazes! Haunted houses! Halloween! The chance to walk through town wearing A) my vampire costume, B) my StarFleet uniform, or C) My hobbit getup. Aw hell, I don’t need it to be October for that. But it helps recruit friends to come with.

Odd how most folks view spring as a period of rebirth. For me, it’s the fall. Samhain, the harvest, et al. It’s the sloughing off of the petty bullshit we cultivated all spring and summer because it was Just So Pretty. It’s the dying out of the pretty flowers (yes they are pretty, but I LIKE to breathe through my nose) and the coming of the crunchy, mystical, magical, thoroughly pagan winter. It’s butternut squash, and pumpkin pie. It’s a time when we pull people closer to us for warmth. Its Brunswick stew, flannel shirts, cuddling. Its scary movies, and thumbing our noses at death. Yes, death always wins. But not before we trip him and make him poot himself. Silly death.

It’s buying that single bag of candy corn, eating seven pieces, then making your friends take it because that was enough. It’s hot mulled wine, and the toasty feeling you get when you have the slightest bit of a buzz on and the guy on the sofa next to you is wearing his jeans just right. It’s reinventing family, as we gather for Thanksgiving. It’s candy apples and Pixie Sticks. Its watching the leaves turn, seeing how even the throes of death can be beautiful, can be natural. It’s the smell of burning Jack O’Lantern, and the smell of those cheap plastic masks. It’s the thrill of reinventing yourself in costume.

Its Oct Freaking Tober, people.

Time to stick a candle in a vegetable and hunker down. Might be a long cold winter. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.