September is the caress of autumn, and the slap of reality. Your soft animal body is responding to the season's turning – but the gears of your mind are crackling to life, casting off the glaze of summer. The consequential things all come crashing back in; there are things to be done. The one year plans, the five-year plans. The taxes you deferred back in the Spring. Back to school, bitches.
After the infernal soup of this summer, the back deck to our apartment is finally beginning to feel usable. Most of the potted plants are past the point of lushness and are entering decay, but the air feels glorious. The summer wildflowers that bordered our small, patchy yard are long gone, but a new wave of autumn night-bloomers have entered the chat in hot pinks and yellows. The last few tomatoes droop on the vine, a final gasp of fecundity after an overactive August. A few dahlia buds are making their long-awaited debut after languidly working on their stalks all summer. Now that the humid stasis has broken, transmutation feels possible – bloom and decay both being forms of change.
This year, change feels hard. The sun won’t stop rolling around, is a nice way to put it. There are decisions to enact, choices to make, and a to-do list that won’t quit. I’m trying to make growth happen, but the days are slippery. I feel alive, but sometimes too alive. I jolt up at 3 or 4 in the morning, mind racing, fully awake, ready to bolt, not sure where. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, my brain urges.
I have a nagging memory of being at a house party several years ago around this time of year, and hearing a story so wild it almost seems like I must have dreamed the entire conversation. It was slightly too warm for a fall party, and we were determinedly sweating in our autumnal flannels and transitional sweaters. In the close quarters of the host’s one-bedroom apartment, everyone was repelled by the idea of the warm cider bubbling on the stove (despite its gorgeous smell), and instead clutched cold bottles of beer that wept fat tears of condensation onto our hands and the parquet floor at our feet.
I met a guy who, when asked how he was doing, shook his head with the bewildered air of someone clearly still in shock. “Well to be honest with you dude, it’s been kinda plus and minus.”
He proceeded to tell us that he had recently woken up from a deep sleep to find a strange man standing over his bed brandishing a claw hammer, seemingly with every intention to bring it smashing down claw-first on his prone, sleeping quarry. Apparently, there had been a series of increasingly threatening break-ins in the neighborhood, which had reached their terrifying culmination here. The would-be victim explained how he had dodged the hammer swing, jolting fully awake with a shriek that startled the attacker, and was able to chase the intruder out the fire escape window from which he had entered. We all stared at the guy in stunned silence.
“So yeah, things are really good! But that’s a thing that’s kind of fucking with me still, if you know what I mean,” he concluded seriously, mustache twitching.
That’s how I remember the story, anyhow. I don’t remember the specifics of whose party this was, what this man’s name was, or what our inevitable followup questions were. It’s even possible that I’ve conflated the sensory specifics – of the heat, and the cider smell, and the guy himself – from separate parties altogether. Nevertheless it’s a story that I associate with this time of year. It fits.
I don’t know what he meant, in any real corporeal sense, of course. But in a way I kind of do: Sometimes September is a cool breeze urging the dahlias to open, and sometimes September is waking up to Claw-hammer Man looming over your bed. Sometimes both, all at once. Your mind starts by whispering okay, time to go in a honeyed coo, and when you haven’t heeded the call to change — or not quickly enough for her liking — she resorts to the pure adrenaline shot of howling let’s go let’s go let’s go in the crisp pre-dawn air of the small hours.
If you’re in NYC on September 30, come hang with us at Caveat for our event GROUP CHAT: when friends become family.
We’re delighted to announce that the brilliant is joining us to talk about her book “First Love,” a poignant reflection on friendship that we just adore.
Please come with: (A) a spirit of curiosity for what it means to live life with a “friends first” mentality, and (B) a book you’re ready to part with! Sliding scale tickets start at $5
This week’s tunes - list updates after every Sunday night show. On 9/16’s show, Andrew conspired with guest DJ Echodex [aka Jed Cabreira]:
Wow, that's quite a story (clawhammer). let's go let's go, indeed.
lovely back porch. Glad you can start to enjoy it again with the change of seasons.
Kind of you to reference my last post. xo
HAHAHHA infernal soup.