The End Of Summer

“After the 4th of July,” my grandmother used to say, “summer is over.” And while that may have been something of an exaggeration, it is not necessarily untrue. Despite what the calendar shows, let’s admit it: summer is done. The plans you made have either fallen through or have been executed half-heartedly and with regret. The failures of the season have already been written in the Book of Life underneath all the failures of summers past. You are even now looking ahead to autumn, with all its inevitable disappointment and uncertainty. That swirling sense of anxiety that sits in your chest is a concrete reminder that despite the lofty ambitions you had for the dog days, you wound up with the same collection of missed opportunities and recrimination that always pile up in your emotional inbox. You are in a holding pattern, where one season is dead and the next has yet to assert itself. Hang your head low and slouch your way toward fall, which is the next stop on your slow march to the tomb. Summer? It’s finished. Now somebody please tell the weather that. Good lord, it’s hot outside. There will supposedly be some relief over the next couple of days, but if life works the way I think it does that is probably only a brief fakeout designed to make the next spate of spirit-sapping humidity even more depressing. Summer may be over, but it still sucks.

Photo by Satish Krishnamurthy