September 30, or Rain Rain Don't Go Away

Certain books are for the summer time.

The Great Gatsby, for instance, with all its talk of the glorified beach life on Long Island feels uncomfortable when read anywhere save a porch in the sunlight or a towel on the shore. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, with its romantic scenes on Franny's fire escape make me envision the steamy heat that radiates from NYC sidewalks.

For me, Wuthering Heights is a summer book, possibly because I read it for the first time in the summer, and possibly because its setting is anything but warm. The contrast somehow works.

Also for me, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, because the summer of 2003 is when I spent most of the days in Pennsylvania and had only the Quidditch World Cup for company. I could have read it five times for all I know.

However, To Kill a Mockingbird is another of those books, but my time reading it has lapsed into Autumn (because I JUST CAN'T FINISH 1984). On the island, it still feels like summer, but today I woke up to the comforting sound of rain drops coming through my window. The house feels damp, and its the perfect day to read.

I am also relieved, for the very first time, that this blistering lonely summer is fading into cooler days.

But it made me wonder, I don't know that I have any Autumn books. This is usually a time when I pat myself on the back for a season well read, and focus my attention towards getting into the swing of school. But this year, I have no such preoccupation, and I dragged my feet with George Orwell to the point where I cannot really justify taking a break.

Decisions, decisions.

A Certain Degree of Uncertainty

This morning I woke up and I switched on the light above my head. I rolled over and checked the time. I realized I must have slept through my alarm. Inconsequential since I had nowhere to be.

I opened a book and I sat still for an hour reading about the adventures of two people who are learning important life lessons. I went upstairs and I drank a cup of black coffee and ate a piece of toast.

I read for awhile longer and then I ate Chinese food out of paper containers. I sat on my stoop and waited for my brother to depart from the bus. Together we sat in the sun for a little while as he asked me why the leaves have to fall off the trees. He ate spirals of bologna and watched cartoons while I attempted to finish a crossword puzzle.

I crossed my legs on the couch and tried to plow on with my book but I stopped myself. I am frustrated. I feel as if I'm doing nothing, but nothing by who's standards? I feel inactive, but not in the physical sense. I know that I DO things, but I am plagued by the restless feeling that I am not DOING anything.

I suppose a certain degree of uncertainty is good, but for how much longer will I feel this... displaced?

September 8,

Today was hot, just like every other day this summer that proceeded it. The humidity blurred the air over the sidewalk and something smelled sharp and metallic. Everything was exactly the same as it had been the day before, except everything was shifted and different.

If you listened carefully you would hear sirens flying past on the avenues, firetrucks traveling to fires that were unexpected at this point in the year, but still occurring because of the oppressive heat. If you listened harder, you would hear the thick and constant rush of air moving through stale leaves that were ready to make their journey to the ground, the branches that had proudly held them all summer were tired and drooping. If you listened even harder then that, you would hear the loud squeal of the old brakes of a school bus a half a mile away.

In the middle of the baking city, where so many kids were melting in classrooms and thinking of sparkling swimming pools, I sat on my stoop and thought about the changing seasons.

I don't like the changing of the seasons because I'm sensitive to what it all means. Four times a year I get anxious and over tired, I want to crawl away into the month before and forget the fact that time marches on.

I watched the grass wave as a rare breeze came through my street and I listened to my brother and sister recount their first day at school and I wanted to get up and run away. Run south, where summer never ever ends. Run somewhere foreign, where the changing seasons would be the last thing on my mind.

Autumn especially makes me think of things I'd rather not dwell on like my lack of academic life this year, or how much I miss the colorful fields of Highbury.

I sat on my stoop and thought about how even though I resented it, time was still moving forward and soon it would be the end of the first day of school and the sky would be changing to dark blue. Despite never having smoked, I wanted a cigarette like a usually do in those moments because I feel its the proper accesory to all of my angst.

I sat on my stoop and had the one thought that can cripple anyone, "I am the only one who feels this way."

And then I got up and went back inside.