Rocks in your head

And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.

The end of summer vacation, the return to school, leaves turning and dying, days shortening… These are all the bad things I’ve associated with September. The days grow shorter, reminding one of the direction of one’s life.  The temperature drops,  you can no longer be outside without a coat.  As a schoolchild, your days are no longer free and wild, to be spent as you like.   The birds will soon take flight to warmer climes.  Even the bugs will settle down either by death or hibernation.   There is no time of the year as depressing as late September.  I am sure the suicide rates rocket as folks look to the future and can’t bear what they see.   Teachers must teach again.  University professors curb their research trips and must get back to their classes.   Then again, the dismal dismay is relative.  Some teachers, I suppose, can’t wait to assume their joyful tasks of imparting knowledge to bright young minds, and of working patiently and rewardingly with not-so-bright young minds.  And some university professors can’t wait to resume their intellectual give-and-take with their most gifted students or to resume their physical give-and-take with their most nubile students.   For the rest of us, it’s just a continuing drudge with less sunshine, less warmth, more heating bills, a stiff, annoying, blinding sunlight while driving, less pleasant walks in the warm weather, and the bleak future of thousands of leaves to be picked up before the first snow.   And worst of all, it reminds us of the temporariness of our lives, the hurtling through another year till the time when we no longer walk this earth.  And of how little time we have left, when it seems only yesterday we were toddlers with a future unlimited in time and in breadth.  Oh, September, you truly are the cruelest month!  ~R. Bremmer

Beth Kirby

Giovanni Rivalt - "Still Life with a Cat and Mackerel on a Table"

source

Ferdinand Wagner the Younger, 1847-1927

1920c. Illustration, from Pinterest.