Thurs., July 1, 1999"I know, I know - Time marches on. But does It have to march on ALL NIGHT LONG right under MY bedroom window?!"
- What I said in a 3 a.m. call this morning to my landlord.
Turns out that under the terms of a lease pre-dating mine,
Time can pretty much do whatever the hell It wants....Yes, my chronic chronophobia has gotten bad again. All the usual symptoms are once more wracking my mind and body. I'm wheezing and sneezing from all the shattered micro-bits of yesterday I'm inhaling. Terrible cramps in the general vicinity of my biological clock. A hyper-sensitivity to lengthening shadows.
I should have seen it coming, given the marked irritability I've felt the last week as PNMS (Pre-New Month Syndrome) set in, but I didn't. I was simply in denial, from the bottom of my one good foot right up to the observation deck at the tippy-tippy-top of my cranium.
Hard to remain in denial when you wake up to find another June has been trampled to death by speeding seconds right outside your door, though....I know I spent an entry ragging on June when it first got here, but, as usual, the silly little month soon grew on me. Amazing how easily we humans get attached to random little flakes off the skin of eternity, isn't it?
I think it was those big, lush fields and their suggestively waving grains which did it for me.
Or maybe it was all those long, lazy weekends in bed.
Whatever the exact cause, the fact remains that for virtually all of the last 30 days, June and I were inseparable.
And now June's gone....I'm not sure what to make of July yet. It doesn't seem to have a whole lot to say, and it certainly did not readily submit to the strip-search I conducted in hopes of discovering that June hadn't really left so much as been abducted.
At least it seems to have inherited its predecessor's tomatoes, fireflies, and way with the Sun, even though June does seem to have taken the Solstice with it to the grave.
I wonder if July will really be as hot as all the almanac writers hint at with their words and asterisks....But what an awful thing to wonder! Father Time may be able to go through an endless string of trophy months without so much as a single decent interval between them but I cannot. July may now have my body, but my thoughts remain with June.
Ahh, June! I have such fond memories of your 3.7" of rainfall and your 9.2 mph average wind speed.... How I sat and watched you in awe as you expertly lengthened your hours of sunlight, day by day! How cute you were, always shyly trying to hide your essential "n" with that charming lit'l "e" you pasted on your behind!!
What if you had lived to be 100 days? Would our summer romance not then have shocked all the naysayers by lasting well into September?
What if everyone had given but a few minutes of their time to extend your life? What might you have become? An annus mirabilis? A landmark decade?? Another Golden Age???
But that way lies madness.
Or should I say "But that way lays madness"?
"July - are you there? It's me, Dan - on the intercom. Could you grab a grammar book and come into my office, please? ... Hello?!"
Stupid temps!
Back To The Past Of My Dreams Home Where Some Entries
Are Oddly Aging Faster Than OthersForward To What Damn Well Better Be
A More Competent Future
(All Material ©1999 by Dan Birtcher between sobs and grammar questions)
