bharrington's Xanga Site

September 18, 2008

The Daily News

1 Are you going through the clove of seasons?

2 It's a term I learned from the short story The Scarlet Ibis.

3 It is essentially that little transitional time that takes place between summer and fall.

4 Nobody really knows what to call it. Usually it's just "Back-to-School" time to Halloween. It's that transitional period where we know the summer is over and the Fall begun, the end of the classic childhood summer and the beginning of school. But it's more than that. You know it. I know it. It's changes we just can't grasp. It makes no sense. It makes a lotta sense.

5 But I really don't think anyone has adequately named it yet. James Hurst, the author of The Scarlet Ibis probably came the closest in that beautiful story.

6 It's that period of time where you are really not accepting reality.

7 For example, you are going through the motions of cleaning up the plates while eating the last piece of pizza, which winds up tasting like a bottle of blue detergent.

8 The world has no idea if it's baseball season or football season.

9 You keep forgetting to go to the cleaners to pick up your coats because it's a thousand degrees on some days and suddenly 50 below the day you are dressed for summer.

10 It's always annoying to me, because they start advertising "Back-to-School" stuff somewhere in late July, which is REALLY a mean thing to do to your summer garden.

11 You know how that is. You start your summer garden somewhere in April or May, and spend the next three months trying against all odds to keep the stuff from drying out and turning brown.

12 Every year I watch that guy on channel 7 who somehow keeps all his plants and flowers looking lush and radiant, and I just wanna punch the guy. In early July, I start quoting Sir Francis Bacon, and my garden blooms as though I were Mr. McGregor.

13 Somewhere around late August everything starts looking leggy and horrid, and I desperately buy stuff in green squirt bottles to rescue my miracle, but alas!

14 The clove of seasons comes in on a hot Oklahoma dust cloud, and remains here for the count, bringing with it a strange chill that happens only this time of the year.

15 Baseball miracles turn into nightmares and teams like the Arizona Diamonbacks kick the legs right out from underneath our new goofballs who have legit talent, and some late-blooming hope that we still have something about which to cheer.

16 About which to cheer.

17 Soooo proper. English teachers.

18 Yeesh.