"April is the cruelest month." - T.S. Eliot, in "The Wasteland. It meant that in the world of the Wasteland (a post-pandemic London that just went through the Spanish flu), it was cruel to think that the outside world was living April with all the flowers bossoming and world living again after a long winter, but inside the Wasteland nothing is happening except death and decay.
I don't think my life is quite like that, but certainly I feel a little jealousy and melancholy in August for times gone by when I was young and free, heading off to college for the first time or attending 1L year of law school, in bright spirits and a bright future, which is constantly driven home to me with all these social media posts of parents sending their children to school for the first time, or the eagerness of college students walking hand-in-hand (well, not really hand-in-hand but the camaraderie is there) on their college campuses, eager for their new lives to begin.......while I'm at home working and venturing outside for maybe 1 or 2 hours a day. It's also kind of cruel how August shoves this "enjoy your summer!" vibe at you with seemingly everyone in the world on vacation (even the Australians come to the Northern Hemisphere since they're in winter right now) and boats, summer BBQ's, rock concerts, bike rides, and just so much sunshine, sunshine, everywhere. I've never been the biggest fan of summer (I'm on record as saying people get dumber in summer) but even I can't deny the long days and breezy summer nights, the frolic and fecundity of life. I just ran by a prominent private university around my neighborhood and college freshmen were gathering in the quad on a beautiful Sunday night for convocation welcoming them to the University, basically the school telling all students to spread their wings and fly....(and with the added good news of $10,000 deduction of federal student loans for qualified students!) as long as you pay the tuition of course. I wish somebody would tell me to spread my wings and fly and that the world is waiting for me.
August is cruel because.......there's no Jeopardy episodes. Even Jeopardy knows that everyone's enjoying their life and not watching TV, so they take a break. It's cruel just replaying old episodes over and over again, although this past season has garnered plenty of rewatchable material.
Oh, and also, after 2 years it finally happened, a cruel disease that I've been trying to avoid like the plague but it finally caught up to me.......nope it wasn't Covid or any of its derivative strains, it was just a cold/the chills that made my whole body feel weak, get a headache, and knocked me out for a whole day. And I know exactly what caused it: The cruel August weather caused the library to jack up the AC to freezing levels, so when I had marinated in all that cold air for 4 hours but then walked out to a 90+ degree furnace, my body couldn't handle the drastic contrast in temperature difference and got a glitch. No matter how good my immune system is (it's kept me from contrasting Covid for 2 years, alhamdulilah) it can't handle both a freezer and a furnace within minutes of each other, and thus I was stuck indoors all day getting over it. This type of cruelty doesn't even happen in winter (I'm never in the cold for that long), but this time 'twas beauty of weather that killed the beast (Bobby). Wake me up when September (begins)- Green Day song.
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