beginnings (or the illusions of)

I like the word September. I like how the syllables tumble out of my mouth as my tongue folds and unfolds. I like how no matter how loudly you say it, it invariably mellows out to a rhythmic murmur. I like how it's long but spelled just like how it sounds. Sep-TEM-Ber. This makes for great ease when spelling it on forms yet still maintaining a sense of accomplishment afterwords.

This all might be due to my birth month bias. But I don't think it's exclusively that: it's just a pretty word. It conjures up all these subtle images of slightly chilly breezes, of the first time waking up with the comforter still snuggled around you, of fresh smelling nights when the temperature, and you, teeter on some sort of change.

It's really a month of rebirth, I wonder if this intuition was weaved into the architects of the academic calendar. Or maybe I have the causal relation wrong--maybe it's really because my life has been constructed this way that I associate a pivotal quality with this month. I'd like to think it's the former; the word is too special to be borne out of term papers and three hole punched notebook shopping. Instead, I will probably continue to choose to believe in the romantic tendencies of the creators of schooling, add them to the growing list of people I photoshop and idealize, add another collision of the way things are and the way things should be to my mental revelations, add September to my box of illusions, along with other trinkets too pretty to shatter.

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