Lughnasa Waxing Honey Extraction Moon
The end of the day. The time when the season turns on a pivot toward fall and away from the Solstice. My mood has shifted to melancholic. Not sure why. Maybe the end of the day, the time of year. It is around this time in the year when I turn melancholy, a sort of seasonal affective disorder, perhaps more related, to the nearness of the school year.
No, not because of any negative associations with school. No, maybe because I’m not going back to school. Not anymore. School was good to me. I got lots of strokes from lots of folks, school was feel good time for me. Yes, I had some troubles that happened during school, but they were extra curricular, the school part, that always grooved.
Well, not quite always. That first year at Wabash I encountered German. German and I did not get along. I found myself near mid-semester and staring at a D. A D! I graduated at the top of my high school class. I didn’t get D’s. But I was about to get one. So, I dropped it. Not my finest hour academically, but it did save my bacon. Why was I taking German? I wanted to read philosophers in their own languages and German seemed like a good place to start.
Other than that first semester at Wabash, school was fun. I enjoyed learning, studying, taking tests, writing papers. Weird, huh? Now when See You In September begins to play on the oldy stations, my nostalgia meter hits a high.
Hmmm. Just occurred to me. This may be the way successful athletes feel when the school year starts, in those day after their career has ended. Those were the best years of my life. That sort of feeling.
No. That’s not it. Those weren’t the best years of my life. These are the best years. Right now.
It may explain why I keep throwing myself into things like the docent program, learning Latin, Tai Chi, always going for the burn that comes from conquering a learning curve. That life long education idea really took hold in me. I believe in it, body and soul.
Though I do, each year when the evening’s cool, the leaves begin to change and parents start packing their kids up to take them off to college, I wish, a part of me wishes, I could go along with them.
Here’s something a bit strange. The song that always comes to mind for me at this time of year is See You In September by the Happenings. Here’s a youtube version filmed on Lake Calhoun.
