Kindred

If April is the cruellest month, then October, half a year apart, must be the kindest. As Keats might have said, it is a season of fellow moodfulness; it is the time towards the day of the dead, when the year also dies. (That, I got from Susan Cooper.)

October is kind, it wraps us in blankets of the fallen. It tells us that it will get cold, but it remains warmer than winter. Where the fall comes in the North, all green is red, and all is well red.

And I recall many times with people I used to know, and some are gone, and some have nowhere left to go.

October the Eighth

This date in the calendar always reminds me that October is actually the eighth month. Ah well.

Gerrymandering the calendar has been covered elsewhere in this blog. The sad story of February is covered here, with a further extension here. Enjoy!

Octobering

October is fire shot through with ash
Is faint and sudden rain, bright sun
And the sudden awareness of old age

A Night In The Lonesome October

That's the title of a little-known 1994 gem of a book by Roger Zelazny. I was reminded of it when She-Who-Knows said that this time of year was sad. In a sense, it is. It's the bleak mid-Autumn, at the very least; if the leaves haven't fallen, they will — and if the people haven't left, they're leaving.

It has occurred to me that perhaps this batch of students may be the last batch of teenagers to whom I will ever be saying farewell at the end of a school year. That reinforces two things to me: 1) that the young phase of my life was over, as with many people, at forty; 2) that the new phase has genuinely begun.

Once again, I have to thank all those who made it possible; from those who were great but thought little of themselves, to those who were small but thought great things of themselves; from those who finagled their way into the counsels of the mighty, to those who contrived to make light of the burdensome; from those who were Family and hence stood by me, to those who were not and still did.

It's not a lonesome October for me. But it must be a lonesome October for the friendless people who have to balance the books while seeing the deficits mount; it must be terribly lonely for the big people "in the high houses that are shuttered from the day" as Chesterton said. Where did summer go for them?